Lady smoking on a terrace with an attendant
Murshidabad, 1760-70
Opaque watercolour with gold on paper, laid down in an album page with large gold rococo scrolls enclosing palmettes on a blue ground, the verso inscribed in pencil with Maggs Bros. inventory number, SAS 744
6 5/8 by 4 1/2 in., 16.8 by 11.5 cm. painting
14 1/4 by 9 7/8 in., 36.3 by 25.2 cm. folio
Provenance
Bruzzi Collection, Hertfordshire, 1982-2015
Published
Maggs Bros., Oriental Miniatures and Illumination, Bulletin no.35, Spring 1982, p.8, no.6
A lady dressed all in green and gold is walking along a terrace holding a narcissus in one hand and the mouthpiece of a hookah in the other, the hookah itself being held by her companion, who is dressed in mauve and orange. The hookah is of gold with interesting decoration of what seem to be the green and orange horizontal bands of enamelling. The terrace ends with a balustrade with white and yellow flowers beyond and a grey sky terminating in orange and gold streaks.
Such scenes were produced both in Awadh and Murshidabad towards the end of the eighteenth century. Ours seems to be Murshidabad on account of the extreme pallor of the skin, the heavy facial shading and the emphatic blackness of the eyes, see for comparison Losty, fig. 11. The depiction of the long peshwaj with its folds marked by heavy gold outlining was similar in both schools at this period. For comparable figures from Awadh, including one by Mihr Chand copied for Col. Polier from a painting in Col. Gentil’s collection, see Roy in Markel & Gude, p. 179, figs. 148-49.
References
Losty, J.P., ‘Painting at Murshidabad 1750-1820’ in Murshidabad: Forgotten Capital of Bengal, ed. N. Das and R. Llewellyn-Jones, Mumbai, 2013, pp. 82-105
Roy, M., “Origins of the late Mughal Painting Tradition in Awadh” in Markel, S., and Gude, T.B., ed., India’s Fabled City: The Art of Courtly Lucknow, New York, 2010