A lady with attendants on a terrace, Mughal, first quarter 18th century

gouache heightened with gold on paper, laid down on an album page with outer margins flecked with gold, reverse with a Persian quatrain in black nasta'liq script, signed 'Mir 'Ali', with polychrome floral cornerpieces

Ex-private collection, Texas, 1970s

In good overall condition, some minor staining at the upper and lower edges of the painting, Persian quatrain on reverse creased, as viewed.
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This painting relates closely to two other compositions in Museum collections. The first is a partially-coloured drawing in the Harvard Art Museums, formerly in the Stuart Cary Welch Collection (see S.C. Welch et al, From Mind, Heart, and Hand, New Haven, p.116-7, no.32), and the second a fully-coloured version set on a moonlit terrace in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS. Ouseley Add.171, f.3v, published in A. Topsfield, Paintings from Mughal India, Oxford, 2008, pp.120, no.56, described as "A lovelorn lady"). All three paintings are roughly the same dimensions, and very close in both composition and painterly style. The clearest difference between both comparisons and the present painting is the slightly more developed terrace of the latter with the inclusion of a large candle lantern in the lower left of the foreground, and a more lush background of flowering shrubs and trees. A further almost identical composition to the Bodleian version was sold in these rooms 31 May 2011, The Stuart Cary Welch Collection, Part Two, lot 11.

The inclusion on the reverse of the album page of a quatrain by Mir 'Ali and the gold-flecked outer margins suggest this accomplished miniature once graced a lavish album. For more on Mir 'Ali, see catalogue note to lot 54 in Sotheby's London, Arts of the Islamic World, 8 October 2014.