Two Mullahs at prayer, India, Deccan, Hyderabad, circa 1785
Auction Closed
October 25, 12:38 PM GMT
Estimate
4,000 - 6,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
gouache and gold on paper
29 by 42cm. (11⅜by 16½in.)
Acquired by Cary Welch before 1978
Sotheby's, London, The Stuart Cary Welch Collection, Part One, Arts of the Islamic World, 6 April 2011, lot 149
Room for Wonder. Indian Painting during the British Period 1760-1880, American Federation for the Arts, New York, 1978
On loan at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, 1983
Sahibs, Memsahibs, and Maharajas. Indian Art under the British, 1765-1880, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University, 1989
S.C. Welch, Room for Wonder, Indian Painting during the British Period 1760-1880, New York, 1978, no.68b, pp.152-3
This painting once formed part of a series that illustrated religious practices in the Deccan. A second painting from the series, from the collection of the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava and depicting Hindu women at prayer before a lingam shrine, was exhibited alongside this work in the 1978 exhibition Room for Wonder. The two buildings in the background are typical of the tombs and mosques associated with the Qutb Shahi dynasty at Golconda. The landscape and figural style shows influence from European art and S.C. Welch suggested that the upward gaze of the mullah on the right evoked the late Baroque period. It is not known whether the series was commissioned by an officer of the English East India Company or by one of the many French officers residing in Hyderabad before the 1798 Treaty between Nizam Ali Khan Asaf Jah II (1734-1803) and the British (Welch 1978, p.153).
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