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Lot Essay
Illustrations of professions were common in Indian miniature painting. Typically different trades were shown, each engaged their characteristic activity and with a certain emphasis on the types of tools and accoutrements specific to their work. As such, this type of illustration is both a charming portrayal of urban and rural life in India, and also is of considerable documentary interest.
This painting depicts a group of three metalsmiths at work, occupied in various aspects of their trade. Dressed identically in white lunghis and small red turbans tied flat, one hammers a basin, while another holds an iron bar with tongs as a third prepares to hammer it. The furnace, with coals and bellows, is clearly shown, as are the various implements laid out next to the smiths.
Inscribed above in a gurmukhi script is the word thedhi-thap, a dialect version of thathera, ‘a maker of hardware or metal pots and pans, a brazier, a tinker’.
The painting would have come from a fine album of trades and occupations executed in Lahore around 1840. The elegant stylisations of the figural drawing show the strong influence of Pahari painting among those artists who were drawn in increasing numbers to the Sikh court there. In this regard, the painting can be compared to a Pahari-style picture undoubtedly executed in Lahore in the James Ivory collection (Losty, J.P., Indian Miniatures from the James Ivory Collection, Francesca Galloway, London, 2010, no. 63).
For contemporary portraits in this charming style still under Pahari influence, see, Archer, W.G. Painting of the Sikhs, London, 1966, figs. 81-91. Two somewhat later albums, executed c. 1860 are in the India Office collections in the British Library (Archer, M., Company Drawings in the India Office Library, London, 1972, pl. nos. 184 and 185), where the charming stylisations seen in this drawing have hardened into stereotypes.
This painting depicts a group of three metalsmiths at work, occupied in various aspects of their trade. Dressed identically in white lunghis and small red turbans tied flat, one hammers a basin, while another holds an iron bar with tongs as a third prepares to hammer it. The furnace, with coals and bellows, is clearly shown, as are the various implements laid out next to the smiths.
Inscribed above in a gurmukhi script is the word thedhi-thap, a dialect version of thathera, ‘a maker of hardware or metal pots and pans, a brazier, a tinker’.
The painting would have come from a fine album of trades and occupations executed in Lahore around 1840. The elegant stylisations of the figural drawing show the strong influence of Pahari painting among those artists who were drawn in increasing numbers to the Sikh court there. In this regard, the painting can be compared to a Pahari-style picture undoubtedly executed in Lahore in the James Ivory collection (Losty, J.P., Indian Miniatures from the James Ivory Collection, Francesca Galloway, London, 2010, no. 63).
For contemporary portraits in this charming style still under Pahari influence, see, Archer, W.G. Painting of the Sikhs, London, 1966, figs. 81-91. Two somewhat later albums, executed c. 1860 are in the India Office collections in the British Library (Archer, M., Company Drawings in the India Office Library, London, 1972, pl. nos. 184 and 185), where the charming stylisations seen in this drawing have hardened into stereotypes.