Johnson 15,8

A princess watching a maid killing a snake.

By Mir Kalan Khan, Faizabad, c.1770.

Richard Johnson Collection. Purchased 1807.

Inscribed below in Persian: ‘‘amal-i mir kalan khan’ (the work of Mir Kalan Khan); numbered 22 in Persian inventory note.

Gouache with gold; on an album page with grey border and apricot margin sprinkled with gold.

213 by 168 mm; page 399 by 270 mm.

Reverse: a quatrain of ‘nasta‘liq’ calligraphy by ‘Ali ... (erased); 17th century.

Reproduced: Ashton (1950), pl.146; Sutton (1952), frontispiece; Habibullah (1959), 54; Losty (1986), 59; Losty and Leach (1998), pl. 30.

A princess, perhaps the queen of Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah II of Bijapur, watches a maid killing a green serpent with a black lance. The maid is looking back at her mistress to gain approval and two other attendant ladies watch from behind the princess. The princess is dressed in a blue bodice and a full skirt of patterned gold. Animals in the picture include a cat in the foreground, two ducks on an artificial pool, a parrot on the fence, and two birds in the sky; on the left is a palace building with a fruiting tree growing against a brown background with band of blue sky at the top.

Note: This is a copy made by Mir Kalan Khan from a Bijapuri original of c.1620. The subject is not identified, but could be an illustration of a court incident where the princess narrowly escaped snakebite. The whereabouts of the Bijapuri original is unknown, but several Lucknow versions exist, two of which are in the Leningrad Albums (one reproduced in Gluck and Diez (1925), pl.521). These are both more detailed and slightly more expressive than the India Office version which omits one of the birds in the tree and some of the flowers in the foreground; one of the Leningrad pictures is in mirror image. Another Lucknow version was sold in London in 1968 (Sotheby, 10 July 1968, lot 80). A comparison can be made between the lost Bijapuri original and the portrait of Ibrahim ‘Adil Shah II in the possession of the Earl of Harrowby (W.G. Archer (1960), pl.16). The strong stylistic affinities such as the placing of the tree against a dark sky with a band at the top, the presence of incidental birds, the position and stance of the main figure, and the patterning of the gold costume, would suggest that the pictures are the work of the same man. Furthermore the inscription on the fan of the Harrowby picture (‘ustad-i sahib-i salamat,’ which may be interpreted as ‘Lord of Salvation’) is also found in the top panel of the building in the second Leningrad version of the lady and the snake. [Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Mir Kalan Khan was experimenting in the Bijapuri idiom as he had also with European stylisms in his ‘Village Life in Kashmir.’].