1970s Indian Mughal Gouache Paper Drawing Depicting Military Horsemen

1970s Indian paper drawing of a goat, part of a large private collection. Dimensions with frame: 35 x 26 cm.

1950s Indian Mughal gouache colorful paper drawing of a hunting party on an antique court fee stamp official paper of the state of Jaipur. Part of a l...

1970s Indian set of three colorful drawing representing the kings royal court. Part of a large private collection.

1970s Indian bonsai paper drawing.

Important framed 19th Century oriental ink on paper drawing Ideograms were often accompanied by images of animals and objects, but sometimes also articulated compositions. A carp j...

Beautifully detailed and masterfully painted, this painting dating from the turn of the 20th century centers its expressive composition upon a rondel of Chinese symbols. Representing...

Five Chinese paintings of western people by an unknown artist China, circa 1760, captions later All in giltwood frames. “A woman with Portuguese hairdo, with gold, silver and gemstone necklace, a skirt under a vest, a koi on her back, called a cloak, a woman customarily inherited the family business, the male humble, to the threshold (Qianlong year, circa 1735).” Gouache on silk, measures: 32 x 25.4 cm “He is a Westerner who had a white skin. He does not have a heavy beard but plaits his hair. He wears a triangular black hat, short jacket, leather shoes and long stockings...

This Mughal miniature was painted at one of the princely courts of India. It depicts a raven-haired princess in a gold-trimmed saffron-colored silk sari. Under a glowering evening sky she dawdles on a white marble terrace, with a pet fawn on a leash, before a landscape dotted with buildings nestled amongst trees beyond a river. Her hair, falling loosely about her shoulders, rather than carefully dressed on her head, indicates that she is a maiden. The overall mood is one of expectancy. Perhaps walking a pet and catching an evening breeze is a pretext to escape palace scrutiny for a lovers’ assignation. In Mughal India tender sentiments were a bridge to the erotic – and if this seems contradictory, so too is the balance of realism and caricature, and naturalism with the schematic. Both are hallmarks of miniatures painted in this place and time. The earliest Mughal Indian miniatures date to the 16th century. They were inspired by those painted at the refined Moslem courts of the neighboring Persian empire. They incorporated figures in spite of the Moslem faith’s proscription against depicting the human form. Such was the nature of sophisticated courtly life everywhere that beauty and pleasure trumped systems of morality. This was no less the case at the provincial Indian courts, where our miniature, marked by a charming pictorial naiveté, was most likely painted. Yet the artist was undeniably accomplished. His command of perspective, introduced by Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century, is seen in the landscape, which rolls back to a distant horizon, contrary to the flat two-dimensional ones following Indian-painting traditions. And if Mughal artists were influenced by Western art, the compliment was returned by Rembrandt and Sir Joshua Reynolds, among others, who collected Indian miniatures (as did, perhaps, Giovanni Bellini who painted in Mughal style the famous miniature of a Persian man...