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Lot Essay
When the merchants bought the shawls, they remained in an unfinished state: often they had not yet been assembled by the rafugars, and rarely had they been cleaned. Consequently, many retained the stiffness from the rice solution with which the warps were treated. The process by which they were washed was carefully described by Thomas Vigne in 1842, and accords closely with what is depicted in this painting. According to him, the shawls were first immersed in water on the banks of a stream, and then "stamped on by naked feet for about five minutes". After that, the shawls are "taken to the canal by a man standing in the water: one end is gathered up in his hand, and the shawl swung round and beaten with great force upon a flat stone, being dipped into the canal between every three or four strokes" (Vigne 1842, pp.129-30).
Many of the authors writing about Kashmir shawl manufacture agree on the importance of washing in the process, and go so far as to suggest that the water quality in the Kashmir valley explains why the shawls made there are so soft. This belief dates back as far as the 17thcentury, when Francois Bernier wrote that shawls made in Agra and Patna were significantly worse than those from the valley because of the poor water quality in the plains (Irwin 1974, p.9). Moorcroft understood that the best water was referred to as ‘Gagreebal’, perhaps a reference to the southern basin of the Dal Lake in Srinagar, and that "it is thought by the manufacturers that no other water is equally well suited for this purpose" (Moorcroft 1823, p.20). For Vigne, however, the best water for washing was that from "the canal between the lake and floodgates at Drogjun", which are located in the south of Kashmir. A certain amount of local pride seems to have been at play here, with European travellers faithfully recording whatever they were told by their interlocutors. Though it is not possible to be specific about where this scene takes place, the darker water around the legs of the figures indicates that this is a fast-flowing stream rather than a lake.
This is one of the three scenes illustrated with engravings in the article by Leo de Bernard in Le Monde Illustré, 26 January 1867, pp.55-6 (see image below). The accompanying text described this scene as taking place "in the river which flows out of Lake Kashmir", which unfortunately does not help narrow down the intended location of the painting. However, de Bernard also added that the water was believed to have "great merit in the preservation of colours", which was locally believed to be the result of the "aromatic plants which grow beside the lake, which are not found in any other country". The poses of the figures in the engraving closely match those in our painting, as do incidental details like the oddly-shaped cow in the background and the shawls hanging on a line to dry. Together with the textual reference which mentions that the engravings are based on paintings by a Kashmiri artist provided by Frainais-Gramagnac, it is highly likely that this is the very painting upon which the engraving - signed by Edouard Coste - was based. The illustrations to the 1867 article includes two further engravings apparently based on paintings from this series: they depict both the shalbaf and rafugars at work, and also share many striking incidental details with the picture in our series.
Two painted copies of this particular scene have been sold in these Rooms, one from the Niall Hobhouse collection sold in these Rooms, 22 May 2008, lot 316; the latter, formerly with Ismail Merchant, sold 7 October 2009, lot 179, and is now in the Toor collection. Similarities include figures in matching poses, as well as the same curiously foreshortened cow over the horizon, suggesting that they may have been directly copied. For the attention paid to the landscape and the detailed treatment of the shawls, this stands as the finest known copy, and possibly the exemplar for the other two. A detail which Bishan Singh is particularly keen to capture is the musculature of the men, eloquently capturing the intensely physical nature of this work. The figure in the centre of this scene closely resembles the man beating a shawl at the left hand side of lot 67: if they are intended to be the same figure, it may suggest that Bishan Singh was not painting ‘types’ but portraits of shawl workers whom he had studied. Certainly, when one considers paintings such as his Amritsar Municipal Committee and his darbars of Ranjit Singh, there is no doubt that Bishan Singh was more than capable of producing finely-realised and recognisable portraits of real people.
Many of the authors writing about Kashmir shawl manufacture agree on the importance of washing in the process, and go so far as to suggest that the water quality in the Kashmir valley explains why the shawls made there are so soft. This belief dates back as far as the 17thcentury, when Francois Bernier wrote that shawls made in Agra and Patna were significantly worse than those from the valley because of the poor water quality in the plains (Irwin 1974, p.9). Moorcroft understood that the best water was referred to as ‘Gagreebal’, perhaps a reference to the southern basin of the Dal Lake in Srinagar, and that "it is thought by the manufacturers that no other water is equally well suited for this purpose" (Moorcroft 1823, p.20). For Vigne, however, the best water for washing was that from "the canal between the lake and floodgates at Drogjun", which are located in the south of Kashmir. A certain amount of local pride seems to have been at play here, with European travellers faithfully recording whatever they were told by their interlocutors. Though it is not possible to be specific about where this scene takes place, the darker water around the legs of the figures indicates that this is a fast-flowing stream rather than a lake.
This is one of the three scenes illustrated with engravings in the article by Leo de Bernard in Le Monde Illustré, 26 January 1867, pp.55-6 (see image below). The accompanying text described this scene as taking place "in the river which flows out of Lake Kashmir", which unfortunately does not help narrow down the intended location of the painting. However, de Bernard also added that the water was believed to have "great merit in the preservation of colours", which was locally believed to be the result of the "aromatic plants which grow beside the lake, which are not found in any other country". The poses of the figures in the engraving closely match those in our painting, as do incidental details like the oddly-shaped cow in the background and the shawls hanging on a line to dry. Together with the textual reference which mentions that the engravings are based on paintings by a Kashmiri artist provided by Frainais-Gramagnac, it is highly likely that this is the very painting upon which the engraving - signed by Edouard Coste - was based. The illustrations to the 1867 article includes two further engravings apparently based on paintings from this series: they depict both the shalbaf and rafugars at work, and also share many striking incidental details with the picture in our series.
Two painted copies of this particular scene have been sold in these Rooms, one from the Niall Hobhouse collection sold in these Rooms, 22 May 2008, lot 316; the latter, formerly with Ismail Merchant, sold 7 October 2009, lot 179, and is now in the Toor collection. Similarities include figures in matching poses, as well as the same curiously foreshortened cow over the horizon, suggesting that they may have been directly copied. For the attention paid to the landscape and the detailed treatment of the shawls, this stands as the finest known copy, and possibly the exemplar for the other two. A detail which Bishan Singh is particularly keen to capture is the musculature of the men, eloquently capturing the intensely physical nature of this work. The figure in the centre of this scene closely resembles the man beating a shawl at the left hand side of lot 67: if they are intended to be the same figure, it may suggest that Bishan Singh was not painting ‘types’ but portraits of shawl workers whom he had studied. Certainly, when one considers paintings such as his Amritsar Municipal Committee and his darbars of Ranjit Singh, there is no doubt that Bishan Singh was more than capable of producing finely-realised and recognisable portraits of real people.