MUGHAL INDIA, EARLY 18TH CENTURY

The nilgai (black buck) is an antelope native to India. The species has been described as the epitome of grace, making them worthy to be hunted by the royalty in the subcontinent. Renditions of this animal have been most often associated with the painter Mansur, who worked in the atelier of the emperor Jahangir in the early 17^th century. A famous study of the nilgai by Mansur from the Shah Jahan album is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (55.121.10.13; Stuart Cary Welch, India: Art and Culture 1300-1900, 1985). It was perhaps painted in Jahangir’s zoological garden and shows little regard for the animal's natural habitat. Another early example from the Johnson Album in the British Library painted circa 1625 makes more effort to capture the semi-arid grass plains that were abundant in the Punjab region of the sub-continent (B20056-49/J.67.5) (Toby Falk and Mildred Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, 1981). Later examples such as a mid-18^th century one sold in these Rooms, 8 April 2008, Lot 278, or a 19^th century painting sold at Bonhams New York, 18 September 2013, lot 118, show the nilgai in a greener landscape. Details of our nilgai such as the tuft of fur below the neck and the shorter horn suggest that this is in fact an earlier example. Later depictions treat the body in a more rigid manner with a shorter tail and elongated horns. They also often portray the nilgai with harnesses, suggesting the domestication of the animal through time.