Or 4769-4770

TWO ALBUMS OF HINDU MYTHOLOGY

Both albums bound in plain red morocco, each consisting of 32 album pages of card with pasted down miniatures surrounded by decorative floral borders, blank versos. Albums rebound c.1870 with flyleaves of paper watermarked [Ho]’dgkinson & Co. 1868’ with Strasbourg lily.

Album: 34.5 by 26 cm. Miniatures: 18 by 22 cm. Album leaves: 34 by 25.5 cm.

Inscribed in pencil on label pasted down on inside of front cover of first volume: ‘2 vols. Bought by Mr. Beckford from the celebrated collection of Van Braam and sold in? Mr. Beckford’s collection for 250£ and bought by Mr. Catlay? Afterwards in Remington Hobhouse’s Catalog.. page 813 & 19, marked 175 guineas.’ On rear inside cover: ‘Bought of G. Baumgartner May 21, 1894.’ [Information repeated in vol. 2.] Old label on rear outside cover: ‘Katalogie indienne.’

Provenance: Col. Antoine Polier (1741-95), Lucknow; bought by W. Beckford, 1787 or 8; Sotheby’s May 6-9, 1817 ‘a portion of the library of William Beckford Esq. of Fonthill, comprising … original Chinese and Hindu Drawings, from the Collections of Van Braam, Bradshaw and Polier: lot 327, Two volumes comprising upwards of 60 miniatures, finely executed, representing the system of Hindu mythology; … with an explanation in the handwriting of Col. Polier’; sold to White for £267.15s.

Published: Losty 1982, no. 131.

Guarded in at front of vol. 1 are 9 pages of text by Antoine Polier describing each of the miniatures, entitled ‘Explanation of the drawings of Hindoo Mythology.’ These are quoted as appropriate beneath the drawings.

The paintings are in a Lucknow style of c.1780, apparently painted in a traditional fashion, but in fact under considerable European technical influence. Normally, all figures are in three-quarter profile, their figures beautifully modelled, standing or sitting except where noted on plain brown grounds against an uncoloured background shading to blue for the sky. Water-colour washes are used throughout, saturated where necessary, but unburnished and apparently without gum arabic. Flesh modelling and shading is achieved mostly by the use of stippling. Landscapes where present are brushed in green streaks merging into blue in the distance with hills or small trees, in an impressionistic version of the typical Dip Chand/Mihr Chand type of landscape. Shadows, sometimes heavy, fall normally to the right.

The individual paintings are pasted on to album leaves, one side only, which are decorated with individually painted borders of floral sprays, between narrow borders of deep blue with meanders of stylised acanthus leaves in gold and silver. The albums leaves bear Persian inscriptions identifying the characters, as well as enumeration in the bottom margin in Polier’s hand. Another system of enumeration in ‘nagari’ numerals is found on some of the folio margins bottom left, obscured or trimmed in many. The descriptions by Polier from the guarded folios are quoted below.