A prince and his mistress on a terrace, Deccan, Hyderabad, 18th century

gouache heightened with gold on paper, laid down on buff paper, inscribed twice concerning the painting's subject and numbered in devanagari script on the reverse

Mewar Royal Collection (inventory numbers on the verso)
Nawab Mir Sir Osman Ali Khan, Asaf Jah VII, Nizam of Hyderabad (r.1911-50)
Edward Suren, London
Acquired in 1967

In reasonably good overall condition, some water staining to central field, lower margins slightly thumbed, losses to page edges, as viewed.
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Erotic subjects are rare in both Mughal and Deccani painting of the late-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Such subjects are more commonly found in the Hindu states of Rajasthan, where they appear as series of illustrations to the Kama Sutra ('Scripture of Desire'), a fourth-century Sanskrit text by Vatsyayana describing the art of lovemaking.

For the derivation of style, see Zebrowski 1983, p.200, no.167 (Golconda, last quarter seventeenth century, formerly in the Gahlin collection) and p.206, no.179 (Golconda, last quarter seventeenth century).