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Village life in Kashmir.

By Mir Kalan Khan, Lucknow, c.1760.

Purchased 13 April 1954.

Inscribed on border in Persian: ‘majlis-i kashmir, ‘amal-i mir kalan’ (A Kashmiri assembly, the work of Mir Kalan).

Gouache with a little gold; on an album page with yellow and apricot borders, the outer border sprinkled with gold.

288 by 335 mm; page 387 by 543 mm.

Square seal on reverse, second seal erased.

Reproduced: Losty and Leach (1998), pl. 25.

Scenes of village life including the gathering of grapes and wood, and cooking. On either side are several-storied buildings, and numerous waterways in the distance with buildings on the land between them.

Note: Mir Kalan Khan is not recorded as a painter of portraits of any of the rulers of Lucknow, but his style is later adopted by other artists who paint in the Lucknow manner, indicating that he came to Faizabad or Lucknow later in his life. This picture, the earliest by him in the Library, is typical of his Europeanised style. The facial type is distinctive, with frequent use of three-quarter face instead of profile. The source of his European influence is uncertain, but his extensive scenes such as this relate to Dutch and Flemish pictures. Other artists seem never to have attempted scenes of this kind which are unique to Mir Kalan Khan. The artists place of origin is uncertain, but he may have been trained at the Delhi court. His peculiarly individual style suggests that he moved to Lucknow and Faizabad where he worked in comparative isolation. [Mir Kalan Khan is now known from inscriptions on the St Petersburg Album to have been working in the imperial studio in the early 1730s.]