Asaf al-Daula, Nawab of Oudh, celebrating the spring festival of Holi with the ladies of his court, attributable to Mir Kalan Khan, Lucknow, circa 1775

gouache heightened with gold on paper, laid down on an album page, inscribed in nasta'liq script: 'Holi [in the] Shesh Mahal of Nawab Wazir-i A'zam-i Hind, Asaf al-Daula Bahadur', the reverse inscribed in nasta'liq script with a quatrain signed by 'Abd al-Rashid Dailami, to the left; and a quatrain signed by Hafiz Nur Allah and dated 1188 AH/1774-75 AD, to the right, interspersed with blue floral borders, outer margins flecked with gold

Nicholas Woodbridge, Bath
Acquired before 1972

In good overall condition, minor creasing to corners, colours vivid and gold bright, reverse calligraphies with various stains and abrasions to paper, as viewed.
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This colourful and energetic celebration of Holi on a palace terrace is set against a landscape panorama that reveals some of the somewhat idiosyncratic traits of the style of Mir Kalan Khan. There are two aspects that allow us to date the picture to circa 1775, one being the identity of the main male figure Asaf al-Daula, who reigned from 1775 to 1797 (an inscription on the verso confirms this identity) and the date of the quatrain on the reverse of 1774-5. This would place it right at the end of the career of Mir Kalan Khan and may help in determining his date of death, which has sometimes been thought to be before 1775.

Mir Kalan Khan (c.1710-75) began his career at the Mughal court in Delhi under Muhammad Shah (r.1719-48). After the sacking of Delhi by Nadir Shah in 1739, during which the royal library was catastrophically looted, and the subsequent death of their royal patron, many of the leading painters from the court atelier left the capital and sought employment at the courts of the princes and nawabs in the provinces. Mir Kalan Khan may have stayed on in Delhi until circa 1755, after which he moved to Oudh, where he found new patronage at the court of the Nawab Shuja’ al-Daula (r.1753-75). After arriving in Oudh his style became more eclectic and eccentric, and he developed a manner of depicting landscapes that was influenced by European art and perhaps even Chinese painting but that was very distinctly his own, the best example being a scene of village life in Kashmir of circa 1760, in the British Library (see Falk and Archer 1981, no.238; Losty and Roy 2012, p.188, fig.130). For a thorough discussion of his career and illustrations of his work see McInerney in Beach, Fischer and Goswamy 2011, pp.607-622; see also Leach 1998, pp.168-177.

Asaf al-Daula, Nawab of Oudh (r.1775-97), was a degenerate and unintelligent ruler whose life of self indulgence left him little time to manage his territory. After the death of his father, Shuja' al-Daula, he moved his capital back from Faizabad to Lucknow. His reign was, however, a period of considerable achievement in art and architecture, with European painters and writers attracted to the exotic life of Lucknow. From the writings of contemporary visitors, R. Llewellyn-Jones tells us that: "Mirza Amani [as he was known] is one of those Characters which dishonour human Nature. His person extremely disagreeable, and his mind depraved beyond description. He is endowed with no Capacity for business and abandoned to the most unnatural of Passions". Other Europeans who visited the Court reported that the new nawab was so fat he was unable to mount a horse and that nowhere else could one find "such examples of depravity than those with which this man regaled his Court and his capital every day". He was "perpetually intoxicated with Liquor - His Evenings are generally devoted to his Orderlies and his Bottle ... all appearance of decency and decorum is banished". (Llewellyn-Jones 1992, pp.58-59).

The quatrain on the verso is by 'Abd al-Rashid al-Dailami, royal scribe to the Emperor Shah Jahan. For other examples of his hand, see Falk and Archer 1981, p.110, no.173 & p.123, no.201. For calligraphy by Hafiz Nur Allah, see ibid. p.139, no.248.