An Akbar period miniature depicting a meeting in a garden, with calligraphy, mounted as an album page, India, circa 1590

miniature side - few losses, new mount, colours bright and strong, overall good condition. calligraphic side - very few losses, new mount, ink strong, overall good condition, as viewed.
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Within a lush, walled garden, enhanced by a splashing fountain and tame deer, a prince and lady respectfully greet a lady wrapped in a white chador.  The man's garments belie his royal status:  turban decorated with plume, flowers, and gold band;  a gold cloud collar at his neck; a fluffy green shawl around his body;  at his waist two sashes from which hang a small knife, a golden chain looped with four archer's thumb rings and two black tassels.  His turban is a type worn not in Mughal India but in Central Asia and Persia.  The bowing lady wears pearls and jewelry that suggest higher status than that of a servant, and her bejeweled headdress reveals her Chaghatai origins. 

The architectural details are carefully and beautifully rendered, particularly the carved red sandstone and the gold-pricked details on the doors.  The view through the open door at lower left is only partially blocked by a black curtain, through which steps and arches can just be glimpsed.  The fat gatekeeper allows passage to the retinue bringing covered gifts.

Because there is no text associated with this painting, and because the event is unknown in other illustrated manuscripts, it is not possible to know who has arrived with a retinue and gifts.  The 'style' of the painting points to a date of around 1590, very similar to that of the "South Kensington" Baburnama, but the size rules out it having been made for that manuscript.  The subject is not known in any of the Baburnama manuscripts.

A clue to the type of manuscript from which this painting comes is that the figures wear garments foreign to Mughal India.  In the same way that Mughal artists clothed figures in Christian stories in European garb, they dressed figures in Mughal illustrations of Persian and Central Asian poetry and literature in exotic clothing, known to the artists from foreigners at the court and from foreign paintings.  But the physical setting usually was Mughal, because that was the experience of most of the Mughal artists.

The painting was probably made in Akbar's karkhana to illustrate a manuscript of Persian poetry or literature, of which there are several high quality examples extant dating or dateable to ca. 1590.  The Divan of Anwari of 1588 (pub. Schimmel and Welch, Met Mus, 1983) is one of the earliest and smallest.  Most of these elegant manuscripts were quite small, too small to have included the Meeting in the Garden, or of later date and more evolved style.  There are, however, two dispersed manuscripts now known only as paintings, sufficiently close in style and of adequate size for the Meeting in the Garden.

One is the manuscript proposed by S. C. Welch to be a Divan of Hafiz from ca. 1590, known now as a painting of Noah's Ark, in the Freer Gallery of Art (S.C. Welch, Imperial Mughal Painting, New York, 1978, p.56, pl.9).  The second is an unidentified manuscript of which two paintings are published by Goswamy and Fischer (see: Wonders of a Golden Age, Painting at the Court of the Great Mughals, Musée Reitberg, Zurich, 1987, pls.60 & 83).  Both paintings are slightly larger than the Meeting in the Garden, but the truncated elements at the top and left suggest that this painting was cut down before it was mounted on the album page.  Both are mounted on album pages and exhibit very similar treatment of architectural elements and space to that in the Meeting in the Garden. 

The calligraphic page includes three couplets in praise of the Prophet and is copied by 'Abd al-Rahim al-katib Shah Jahani.

No scribe of the Shah Jahan period with the name 'Abd al-Rahim al-katib is recorded, however, there is a scribe of that name, who was originally from Herat, moved to India and worked at Khan Khanan's library for sometime and then joined Jahangir's from whom he received the titles 'Anbarin Raqam and Rawshan Raqam.  His death is not recorded.  His recorded works are dated between 999 (1590-91) and 1034 (1624-5).  If the same calligrapher, this piece would be his latest recorded and shows he must have lived during Shah Jahan's period. (ref. Mehdi Bayani, ahval va asar-e khosh-nevisan, vol. II, Teheran, 1346 sh., pp.389-91).

We are indebted to Dr Ellen Smart for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.