A portrait of a Holy Man: a fragment from a royal Mughal album border, possibly the Jahangir Album (the Gulshan Album), Mughal circa 1610-20

Gouache with gold on paper, mounted later on an album page with wide gold-sprinkled blue borders

In generally good overall condition, very minor abrasions to edge of painting, two very small flakes to sides of figure's turban, a minor scratch to middle right edge, minor small creases, colours and gold bright, album page laid down on card, as viewed.
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This exquisitely painted figure of a hunched holy man is a fragment from a royal Mughal album, quite possibly the well-known Jahangir Album, also known as the Gulshan Album and the Berlin Album, which was assembled for Emperor Jahangir in the early seventeenth century with exceptional early Mughal paintings and ravishing border designs. The quality of the painting of the figure here is exceptional, and the detailed rendering of the face and arms - the strong but careworn expression in the grey eyes, the lines on the forehead and around the eyes delicately delineated, and the veins on the arms subtly suggested with faint red lines - points to a master artist of the calibre of Govardhan, who is known to have painted several of the borders of the Jahangir Album, including one that he signed and dated 1619 (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, A117, fol.25b, see Beach 2002, fig.14). For closely related figures of holy men attributed to Govardhan see Leach 1986, no.28i, p.97. A group of fragments from borders of the Jahangir Album are in the Cincinnati Art Museum (see Smart and Walker 1985, nos 8a-d, pp.31-31, pl.8a-8d).

The surrounding gold "landscape" of trees, bushes and flowers is also similar to several of the borders of the Jahangir Album, although the composition here is slightly more spacious than most other examples. The type and arrangment of the gold foliage here is quite different from the borders of the royal albums produced under Shah Jahan, such as the Wantage Album, the Minto Album, the Kevorkian Album, the Late Shah Jahan Album and the Nasir al-Din Shah Album, and thus the Jahangir Album remains the most likely source for the present fragment. The only other possible source might be the borders of a royal manuscript. For example, the opening double page of the British Library Akbarnama of circa 1604-5 has borders with figures surrounded by similar gold foliage as the present example (see Stronge 2010, pp.111,116). There are one or two anomalies in the present fragment. The size is relatively large for any of the above-mentioned albums. The vertical dimension is 10cm, whereas most of the upper and lower borders of these Mughal albums measure between 8 and 9cm, although, of course, variations in the size of the central panel of each page, where the miniature or calligraphy sits, determine the size of the upper and lower borders. Since the Jahangir/Gulshan Album is the largest of all seventeenth century royal Mughal albums, with overall dimensions of 42.5 by 26.7cm (some four to five centimetres taller than the albums of Shah Jahan), it is the most likely context for the present fragment in terms of the size. Another curiosity is that the head of the tambura  appears to turn the wrong way. However, many other depictions of similar musical instruments in Indian painting show the head apparently angled the wrong way, and in most cases it is a form of optical illusion related to the artist's depiction of perspective and depth, see Pal et al 1997, pp.166, 167, 179, 263, 265; Bor and Bruguiere 2003, pp.23, 28, 102, 176-189.

The majority of the Jahangir/Gulshan Album is in the Gulistan Palace Library, Tehran, while a substantial part is in the Staatsbibliothek, Berlin. Many single leaves and pages are in other museum collections in Europe and North America including the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, the Musée Guiment, Paris, the Freer Gallery, Washington DC, Harvard University Art Museums, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Mass., the Nelson Atkins Museum, Kansas City, the St. Louis Art, Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. For illustrations and discussions of the album see: Beach 1978, pp.43-45; Beach 1981, pp.156-167; Beach 2002; Beach 2004; Tehran 2005, pp405-465; Stronge 2010, pp.90-91, 107, 113, 117, 124, 126, 136, 223; Soudavar 1992, pp.305-310; Wright et al 2008, pp.76-80, Beach et al 2011, vol.1, pp.135, 160, 211, 215, 218, 223, 346, 357, 363, 366.