Portrait of a Lady, calligraphic album page from the Friedrich Sarre Collection, India, Mughal, Lucknow, late 18th century

Inscriptions:

fazl-e elahi shod 

‘It occurred through divine favour’

Signed:

harrarahu muhammad

'Muhammad wrote it’

This album page belonged to the preeminent German archaeologist, scholar and collector Friedrich Sarre (1865-1945). Sarre travelled extensively throughout the Middle East and published his findings in Denkmaler persische Baukunst in 1910 and the monumental Archäologische Reise im Euphrat-und Tigris-Gebiet co-written with Ernst Herzfeld from 1911-20. In 1899 Sarre's collection was exhibited at the Kunstgewerbe Museum and in 1922 Sarre donated his collection to the Kaiser-Friedrich Museum which was to develop into the future Museum fur Islamische Kunst. This album page was a gift from Sarre to his daughter and was published in Kühnel's Islamische Schriftkunst in 1942. 

The calligraphy on the verso is in an outsized script with the lower curves of the ligatures thickened. A related example of this exaggerated nasta'liq is found on a late eighteenth-century Mughal page from the Read Album in the Pierpoint Morgan Library, New York (Schmitz 1997, p.170, no.50, fig.235). The coloured drawing on the recto is stylistically difficult to place but it has been suggested that it is late Mughal-influenced work from Bundi, indicated by the distinctive round face, straight nose and small rosebud mouth. The floral borders are typical of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century albums from Delhi and Lucknow (see Losty 2002, figs.7, 8, 10, 11 & 13).