A wedding procession, Murshidabad, circa 1760-1770

Opaque watercolour and gold on paper, floral borders

The Art of Mughal India, Asia House Gallery, New York, 1964
Indian Painting, 15th-19th Centuries, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 1965
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, 1969

Welch 1963, no. 82
Harvard 1965, no.42
Patnaik 1985,  p.180 ,no.12

Generally in good condition. As viewed.
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This beautifully detailed painting depicts a wedding procession slowly crossing the fertile and gently undulating plains of Bengal. The artist has contrasted the generally sparse landscape with the intense colour and tightly packed crowd of the wedding procession at the centre. In the foreground farmers work the land and tend their herds of cattle. The skyline is dotted with tall palms, several with realistically bent trunks, set against a stormy skyscape.

This painting comes from one of three sets of large-scale pictures portraying aspects of life and worship in Bengal, including processions, pilgrim scenes, market scenes and landscapes, executed at Murshidabad about 1760-70. The smallest of the sets, measuring 27 by 25cm is known from three examples, two in the British Library, India Office Collections, London (Losty and Leach, nos.23-24; Falk and Archer 1981, no.374) and one in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (Leach 1995, vol.2, no.7.103, pp.768, 778-9). The latter shows an extremely similar landscape and riverscape to the present work. The next largest set, measuring around 33 by 42cm is known from three examples: the present painting, a pilgrim scene sold in these rooms 9 October 1978, lot 223, and a royal procession scene sold at Christie's, London, 15 October 2002, lot 185. The largest, measuring around 45 by 60cm is known from three examples, all sold at Christie's, London, 16 June 1987, lot 139-141, and two sold subesquently in these rooms 23 October 1992, lots 498-499 (see also Hazlitt Gooden and Fox 1991, nos.3 and 4).

All employ a very similar style, combining elements of Mughal and Company School painting. Cary Welch had originally attributed the present work to Murshidabad (Welch 1963 p.174, no.82), but later suggested Patna (a label on the backboard of the frame has the word "Murshidabad" crossed out and a note beside it written in Welch's hand reading "more likely Patna". The Patna attribution was repeated by Patnaik (Patnaik 1985, p.180, no.12), but all the other paintings from these sets have been attributed to Murshidabad by Archer, Leach and Falk. 

Leach, commenting on the Chester Beatty example, states:
This sensitive genre painting with its small, meticulous details is a type characteristic of Murshidabad; the stocky figures relate closely to those of the Beatty Murshidabad manuscript of the Dastur-i Himmat. ... The type owes much to British taste, as its distant vistas and lively interest in daily activities suggest. Nevertheless, it is difficult to classify such pictures rigidly as either Company-style or Provincial Mughal works. The emphasis on detail is solidly in the Mughal miniaturist tradition. From the number of examples which found their way into British collections, it would, however, appear that many patrons of this type of work were British." (Leach 1995, vol.II, p.768).