An important 114-page album of Mughal miniatures and calligraphy, India, late 17th and 18th century

This important album of seventeenth and eighteenth-century Mughal painting is remarkable among such albums for being still intact as a bound album. It belonged to Robert Hoe III, the American businessman and printing press manufacturer who founded the Grolier Club, the famous New York bibliophilic club established in 1884. His extensive library, including the present album, was sold at auction in New York in 1911 and 1912.

The album has been assembled along traditional Mughal lines, with miniatures opposite miniatures and calligraphies opposite calligraphies, except in a few cases. In terms of the miniatures, similar themes and compositions are placed opposite each other, again reflecting a traditional Mughal approach. For example, a portrait of the Emperor Muhammad Shah is placed opposite one of Nadir Shah, the Persian warlord who vanquished Muhammad Shah and sacked Delhi in 1739. The majority of the paintings are of provincial Mughal origin from the second half of the eighteenth century, with a few late seventeenth or early eighteenth-century examples. A few are later versions of paintings in seventeenth-century royal albums (e.g. a portrait of Mahabat Khan) and many show close stylistic and compositional similarities to other works produced in Oudh and Murshidabad in the period 1760-1790, some of which were commissioned by or bought new by British and other European patrons. This album was probably put together in this context of early European patronage and collecting. Many also show the clear influence of known artists of the period such as Mir Kalan Khan, Mihr Chand and Dip Chand. The binding, although of generic type, is almost identical to the binding of an album of similar date assembled by the artist and East India Company officer James Forbes (1749-1819), now in the Louvre Museum, Paris (see S. Makariou, Un album imperial de peintures mogholes, Paris, 2013, p.27), and these two together perhaps indicate the general format and style of bindings used for albums assembled by or for European patrons at this period.

Two of the miniatures - portraits of Emperor Muhammad Shah and the Persian warlord Nadir Shah - are signed by the Mughal artist Aqil Khan, several of whose works are in the British Library (T. Falk and M. Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, London, 1981, nos. 203-6). As well as numerous portraits and many stylised images of women in groups or standing alone (including salabhanjika), several of the miniatures are Ragamala illustrations, while floral studies abound.

Like the paintings, the calligraphies are mostly of eighteenth-century origin, but one is ascribed to the Persian master Imad al-Hasani at Qazwin in 1014/1605, one, in safina form, is probably of late fifteenth or early sixteenth-century Persian origin, and several written on marbled paper may be of seventeenth-century Mughal origin. The other calligraphers represented are as follows: Hafez Shaykh Muhammad, Jawahir Raqam, Muhammad Sadiq bin Jawahir Raqam, Mirza Muhammad ‘Alawi, Pir Muhammad, Bahadur, Muhammad Zahid, Khanazad Faqirullah, Shahyar, ‘Abd al-Rawf, Muhammd Salih Pir Allah.

The album as a whole presents a typical array of later Mughal works and styles and embodies precisely the aesthetic that attracted the majority of early European patrons of Indian painting in the eighteenth century.

The complete list of miniatures and calligraphies is as follows:

1 Floral study

2 A Mughal Prince

3 Jahangir with a prince (perhaps Shah Shuja’)

4-5 Floral studies

6 Gujari Ragini

7 Todi Ragini

8 Calligraphy

9 Floral study

10 A Princess

11 Shah Jahan

12-13 Floral studies

14 Ladies visiting ascetics by a fire in the woods (possibly Devghandar Ragini)

15 A lady with a vina visiting ascetics (possibly Devghandar Ragini)

16-17 Floral studies

18 A lady on a terrace

19 A lady on a terrace

20 Floral study

21 Calligraphic exercise

22 Emperor Muhammad Shah, signed by Aqil Khan

23 Nadir Shah, signed by Aqil Khan

24 Calligraphy, by Hafez Shaykh Ahmad

25 Floral study

26 A courtesan in European costume on a terrace

27 A courtesan on a terrace

28-29 Floral studies

30 A lady reclining on a terrace (possibly Gujari Ragini)

31 A lady talking to a parrot (possibly Sohini Ragini)

32 Calligraphy, by Jawahir Raqam (Jewel-pen)

33 Calligraphy on marbled paper

34 A lady reclining on a terrace listening to musicians (possibly Khamhavati Ragini)

35 A lady holding a flower garland on a terrace at night listening to musicians (possibly Gauri Ragini)

36 Calligraphy, by Muhammad Sadiq bin Jawahir Raqam

37 Calligraphy, by Mirza Muhammad ‘Alawi

38 A lady dancing on a terrace

39 A lady dancing on a terrace

40 Calligraphy, by Pir Muhammad

41 Floral study

42 A standing lady holding a flower

43 A standing lady grasping the branch of a tree (Salabhanjika)

44 Calligraphy on marbled paper

45 Floral study

46 A lady at her toilet in a landscape

47 A lady at her toilet in a landscape

48-49 Floral studies

50 A lady walking by a shrine, an ascetic nearby

51 A lady with companions worshipping at a Siva lingham (possibly Bhairavi Ragini)

52 Calligraphy, by Bahadur

53 Calligraphy, by Bahadur

54 A prince on horseback holding a falcon

55 A prince on horseback (late 17^th/early 18^th century)

56 Floral study

57 Calligraphy

58 Two ladies by a garden terrace

59 Two ladies by a garden terrace

60 Calligraphy on marbled paper, by Bahadur

61 Calligraphy, by Muhammad Zahid

62 Ladies with musicians in a landscape with deer

63 Ladies with musicians in a landscape with deer

64 Calligraphy, ascribed to ‘Imad al-Hassani, Qazwin, with date 1014/1605

65 Calligraphy, by Khanazad Faqirullah

66 An ascetic visited by female pilgrims (probably a Ragamala scene)

67 A female ascetics visited by a lady

68-69 Floral studies

70 Ladies visiting an ascetic by a fire in the woods (possibly Devghandar Ragini)

71 A lady and companions worshipping at a Siva Lingham

72 Calligraphy, by Bahadur

73 Floral study

74 A prince and a Shaykh in a landscape (17^th century)

75 Ladies visiting a holy man in a landscape (17^th century with later additions)

76 Floral study

77 Calligraphy, by Shahyar

78 A lady holding a flower

79 A lady holding a vase of flowers

80-81 Floral studies

82 Figures in European costumes by a palace chamber with a ram nearby

83 Figures in European costumes by a palace chamber with a ram nearby

84-85 Floral studies

86 A Mughal nobleman

87 A Lady standing in a landscape

88-89 Floral studies

90-91 Floral studies

92 A Mughal prince

93 Mahabat Khan in a striped Jama, late 17^th/early 18^th century (a later version of the same portrait in the Late Shah Jahan Album, Chester Beatty Library 07B.33)

94-95 Floral studies

96 A lady on a couch in a landscape

97 Two ladies bathing in a stream

98 Floral study

99 Calligraphy

100 Two ladies in a landscape with a vina and a huqqa

101 Two ladies in a landscape with a vina and a huqqa

102 Calligraphy

103 Calligraphy, signature erased

104 A figure in European costume seated holding a hawk

105 A figure in classical costume on a throne on a terrace

106 Calligraphy, in safina form (probably Persian, late 15^th/early 16^th century)

107 Calligraphy, by ‘Abd al-Rawf, dated 1175/1761

108 A standing lady grasping the branch of a tree, a deer nearby (Salabhanjika)

109 A lady with companions in a landscape with deer (possibly a version of Todi Ragini)

110 Calligraphy on marbled paper

111 Calligraphy, by Muhammad Salih Pir Allah

112 A kneeling prince, probably Azim al-Shan or Aurangzeb

113 A kneeling prince, probably Farrukhsiyar

114 Floral study