A lady visiting a shrine

By the Mughal artist Fath Chand, circa 1740-50

Opaque watercolour heightened with gold, in an album page of swirling purple flowers and large open poppies; inscribed on the back in Nagari: kam fate chand “work of Fate Chand”

48.5 by 32.2 cm., 19 by 12 5/8 in. page; 24 by 16 cm., 9 ½ by 6 ¼ in. miniature

Artistic life seems to have continued at Delhi in the two decades immediately succeeding Nadir Shah's sack of the capital in 1739 and was not finally given a death blow until Shah 'Alam's flight to the east and coronation at Allahabad in 1759.

Fath Chand is one of the known artists of this late phase of Mughal painting. He collaborated with Muhammad Faqirallah Khan 1750-60 on a dispersed ragamala series of which his Kakubha ragini is in the British Library (Falk, T., and Archer, M., Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, London, 1981, no. 201), while Faqirallah Khan's Dipak raga is in the Binney collection (Binney, E., 3rd, Indian Miniature Painting from the Collection of Edwin Binney, 3rd: the Mughal and Deccani Schools, Portland, 1973, no. 84).

The present painting, depicting a lady visiting a Hindu shrine, with finely observed detail both architectural and figural, is a version of another earlier painting by the same colleague in the Johnson collection (Falk & Archer, op. cit., no. 180 and J.P. Losty & Linda Y. Leach, Mughal Paintings from the British Library, London, 1998, no.18). In the ragamala set, Fath Chand exhibits decided tendencies towards the style of Avadh with moon-faced ladies in three-quarter profile, whereas here he seems more in tune with Faqirallah Khan's earlier style.

The lady carrying her water-pot walks hesitantly towards the little shrine, more resembling a domestic shrine than one in a temple, but with the divinity absent. The setting is a small shrine formed of six baluster columns supporting a roof and a dome, the space beautifully suggested as is also the case in Faqirallah Khan's version. In the latter, a yogini waits in a cella beneath the dome, an embellishment absent here. Behind are mango trees with parrots eating the fruit and a night sky with a moon emerging from dark clouds.

Provenance

Private collection, London, acquired early 1980s