Johnson 1,27

A game of polo.

By Ram Sahai, Faizabad, c.1770.

Richard Johnson Collection. Purchased 1807.

Signed in lower left corner in Persian: ‘‘amal-i ram sahai musavvir’ (the work of the painter Ram Sahai); numbered 9 in Persian inventory note.

Drawing with coloured wash and gold; narrow gold border and plain margin.

268 by 380 mm; page 482 by 366 mm.

Two princely horsemen challenge in the centre of the open field, as their supporters watch or approach from either side. A crowd of spectators and an army are in the distance.

Note: The subject is derived from a mid-seventeenth-century Mughal original. Another eighteenth-century version is in the Berlin State Museums (Kuhnel (1922), pl.112; Kheiri (1922), pl.17). The fine drawing and occasional soft colouring are features of the illustrative style current at Faizabad, and are also found in a series of illustrated maps (Add.Or.4039) made for Col. Gentil at Faizabad in 1770. Ram Sahai subsequently moved with the Oudh court to Lucknow, where he was later employed by Johnson, ‘see’ Johnson Album 54, various paintings).