Shaykh Sa'di seated with a musician, India, Provincial Mughal, Awadh, circa 1760

Shaykh Sa’di (1210-91), better known as Sa’di or Sa’di Shirazi, is thought to be one of the greatest medieval Persian poets. His most well-known epic works, Bustan ('The Orchard') and Gulistan ('The Rose Garden'), were popular subjects with scribes and artists at the Mughal and Provincial Mughal courts. Here Sa’di is depicted leaning against a tree, holding a book, and gazing pensively into the distance as a musician or nobleman plays a tanpura.

This folio is from an album which was possibly assembled by the Nawab of Awadh, Shuja al-Daula, around 1770. Some paintings from the album bear the seal of Sir Elijah Impey, the first Chief Justice of Bengal from 1774-83. These might have been gifted to Sir Elijah or acquired by him from the Nawab’s family soon after his death (Leach 1995, vol.II, p.655-6). Sir Elijah and Lady Impey are known for commissioning a group of paintings in Calcutta between 1777 and 1783, now referred to the ‘Impey Album’, which is considered to be one of the finest sets of natural history illustrations made for the British in India. For an illustration of a spot-billed pelican from the Impey series in the present sale, see lot 51.

It has also been suggested that the patron of this album could have been the Mughal nobleman Najm al-Din 'Ali Khan. An impressive folio from the album by the artist Kalyan Das depicts a lavish palace interior with Najm al-Din 'Ali Khan watching a dance performance (see Sotheby’s London, 14 December 1987, lot 31). The painting belonged to the Hon. Stephen Tennant (1906-87), the youngest son of Lord and Lady Glenconner. It was part of a group of sixteen lots, all from the same album as the present folio, offered for sale as lots 25-40. Tennant is thought to have acquired this group on the advice of his friend, the writer E.M. Forster. For other folios sold at auction, see Christies, London, 8 April 2008, lots 293 and 294; 25 April 2013, lot 175; Sotheby’s London, 25 October 2017, lot 83 and 19 October 2016, lot 18.

Further folios from the album were in the Pozzi Collection in Paris (see J. Soustiel and M. Beurdeley, Collection Jean Pozzi – Miniatures Indiennes et Orientales, Mes Rheims et Laurin, Palais Galleria, Paris, 5 Decembre 1970, nos.17-20, 24, 71 and 82). There are eighteen folios in the Chester Beatty Library – eight of these were produced at the Mughal court in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the other ten paintings date from the eighteenth century and have been attributed to Awadhi artists such as Mihr Chand, Sital Das and Bahadur Singh (Leach, ibid., pp.656-664; nos.6.232-6.241). 

The folios all have inner dark blue borders, wide margins which are gold-flecked on buff paper, and a distinctive cartouche in the upper margin comprising a Persian inscription in nasta’liq. Many of these inscriptions begin with the words tasvir-i husn… leading to this album sometimes being referred to as the ‘Husn Album’.