BIJAPUR, DECCAN, INDIA, CIRCA 1660

Sultan ‘Ali Adil Shah II (1656-72) was just eighteen when he succeeded the throne of the Deccani kingdom of Bijapur. In addition to the relentless pressure applied by the Mughals to the north, the young ruler found himself squeezed as well in the west by the rising strength of the Marathas under Shivaji. Nonetheless, he managed to maintain strong artistic patronage and some of the great Deccani paintings come from his atelier. Despite his great artistic patronage, portraits of the ruler are relatively rare with only a handful in public and private collections.

One of the most well known examples is that from the Howard Hodgkin collection now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (LI118.98) which has been attributed to The Bombay Painter. The Bombay Painter was perhaps the greatest artist of this later period and has been identified as Abdul Hamid Naqqash (Navina Najat Haidar and Marika Sardar, Sultans of Deccan India 1500-1700: Opulence and Fantasy, New Haven and London, 2015, cats.66 and 67, pp.148-49). Another portrait of the Sultan attributed to Abdul Hamid Naqqash is in the Jagdish and Kamla Mittal Museum of Art (John Seyller and Jagdish Mittal, Deccani Paintings, Drawings and Manuscripts in the Jagdish and Kamla Mittal Museum of Indian Art, Hyderabad, 2018, no.16). The present painting shares many of the same features found on the portraits of ‘Ali II by the Bombay Painter: the style of the face, lips and eyes as well as some of the textile details, such as the curtain, which were favoured by The Bombay Painter. However, a slight compressing of the proportions of the body and stiffness in certain details suggests that this painting is more likely the work of one of his followers.

Other portraits of Ali Adil Shah II include one in the British Library (Toby Falk and Mildred Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, London, 1981, p.503, no.411) the David Collection (inv.no2/2020); the Cowasji Jehangir Collection, Mumbai (Navina Najat Haidar, Treasures of the Deccan, Chennai, 2018, p.26) and one in the Barber Institute of Fine Art, Birmingham (Mark Zebrowski, Deccani Painting, London, 1983, fig. 108).