A princess with attendants on a terrace, India, Mughal, late 17th/early 18th century

gouache with gold on paper, laid down on stout cream paper, reverse with a panel of nasta'liq calligraphy

Parke Bernet Galleries, New York, 1952, lot 470.
Thence by descent.

In good condition overall. Borders of verso abraded. As viewed.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

This striking painting is notable for the figure of the European princess staring directly out at the viewer. Similar European-derived female figures appear in other Mughal and Deccani paintings of the late seventeenth and eighteenth century, implying that a specific European print of perhaps the third quarter of the seventeenth century was the original source for the various Indian interpretations (see, for example, a Deccani version of the second half of the seventeenth century sold in these rooms, 19 October 2016, lot 14).

The distant European townscapes are ultimately derived from prints brought to India in the early seventeenth century, but their popularity as background elements in Mughal painting continued through the late seventeenth century and into the eighteenth (e.g. a late eighteenth-century river scene in the St. Petersburg Album, in the David Collection, inv. 10/2012; and a mid-eighteenth century example in the India Office Library, see Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, London, 1981, p.471, no.366).

The atmospheric skyscape, heavy with clouds lit by the setting sun, is also derived from late seventeenth century painting, and continued to be a popular feature of works produced during Muhammad Shah's reign in the 1720s and 1730s (see the river scene in the David Collection mentioned above, and a portrait of Muhammad Shah on horseback in the Bodleian Library, MS. Ousely Add. 173, fol.27).