A royal couple drinking wine in a landscape, attributable to an artist who worked for Prince Dara Shikoh, India, Mughal, circa 1635

Sotheby's, New York, 21 March 1990, lot 54

This elegant painting is attributable to an artist who also worked on an important seventeenth century Mughal album assembled under princely patronage, now known as the Dara Shikoh Album. The patron of the album, Prince Dara Shikoh (1615-59), was the eldest son and heir of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan. The album was gifted by the prince to his wife, Nadira Banu Begum, who was also his cousin and the daughter of Sultan Parviz, the second son of Emperor Jahangir. Dara Shikoh and Nadira Banu Begum were married in 1633. A Persian inscription in the hand of Dara Shikoh on folio 2 of the album records this gift to his wife and is dated 1056 AH/1646-47 AD. The album is now in the collection of the British Library in London (Add.Or.3129).

There are two dates inscribed on the album. The first is mentioned in the dedicatory inscription. The second is on a painting by Muhammad Khan, signed by the artist and dated 1043 AH/1633-34 AD (f.21v.). The painting depicts a kneeling prince dressed in a Persian style costume pouring wine from a jewelled bottle into a cup (Falk & Archer 1981, illus. colour pl.7). Comprising seventy-four folios with sixty-eight paintings alongside specimens of calligraphy, the Dara Shikoh Album primarily features portraits of young Mughal princes and notable women of the court. The contents of the album are listed in Falk & Archer 1981, no.68, pp.72-81. Several art historians have argued that the album must have been produced between the two inscribed dates of 1633 and 1647. However, in the book accompanying the 2012 exhibition, Mughal India, Art, Culture and Empire, held at the British Library in London, the curators J.P. Losty and Malini Roy suggested that the princely portraits were executed between 1631, the year of Dara Shikoh’s engagement to his cousin, and 1633, the year of their wedding. Among the princely portraits are several portraits of Dara Shikoh himself. There are also a few depictions of holy men, and studies of flowers and birds. Dara Shikoh would have been between the ages of fifteen and eighteen during these years (Losty and Roy 2012, pp.124-137).

The paintings in the Dara Shikoh Album are arranged in pairs, with the subjects facing each other alternating with folios of calligraphy. While undertaking the compilation of this album, Dara Shikoh would have had access to several imperial Mughal artists working for his father, Shah Jahan. Alongside Muhammad Khan whom we know worked on the album, the portraits have been attributed to other artists such as Balchand, Chitarman, Bichitr, Murar, Lalchand, and Bishn Das (ibid., fig.77-84, pp.128-135).

The lady in the present painting, holding a wine cup in her left hand and a bottle in her right, is closely comparable to a stand-alone portrait of a lady of the court in the Dara Shikoh Album, attributed to the artist Bichitr and dated to circa 1630-33 (Add.Or.3129, folio 28; ibid., pp.133-4, fig.83). In an almost identical manner to the present example, she wears an orange peshvaj over a lilac paijama, a patterned gold patka, a plum-coloured odhani over her shoulders with the gold edges visible over her head, and a pair of distinct yellow and purple pointed slippers with orange tassels at the front. Both paintings have large plants in the foreground and a detailed receding Europeanised landscape in the background with rows of trees and rolling hills beyond, all in green grisaille. The landscape in the Dara Shikoh album painting includes a Flemish town with a church and a castle. This distinct landscape is typical of Bichitr’s style. A comparable, more detailed background can also be seen in a portrait of Asaf Khan by Bichitr dated to circa 1631 in the Victoria and Albert Museum (IM.26a-1925).

The lady in our painting offers a cupful of wine to a young prince on her left who stands with one foot languidly removed from his slipper. He wears a purple plume in his turban, strings of pearls around his neck, a gold dagger tucked into his cummerbund, and a sword in his left hand. The figure of the prince can be compared with a few examples in the Dara Shikoh Album including a portrait of Dara Shikoh himself holding a jewelled ornament in his right hand and a tray of jewels in his left, attributed to Chitarman and dated c.1631-32 (Add.Or.3129, folio 19v; illus. Losty and Roy 2012, fig.78, p.129); another portrait of Dara Shikoh holding a gold tray with loose pearls and a spinel in his right hand (Add.Or.3129, folio 35v; illus. Falk and Archer 1981, 68 f.35v, p.389); and to a further portrait of an unidentified princely youth holding a flower in his right hand and a sword in his left (Add.Or.3129, folio 37v; illus. Falk and Archer 1981, 68 f.37v, p.389).

The calligraphy on the reverse comprises a few lines of Persian prose unrelated to the subject to the painting which mentions a nobleman called Maqsud ‘Ali Bayg who had been ordered to look for fine horses, returns with a few and requested to look for more.