Johnson 25,8

‘Aziz Khan Chaghata, aged thirty-three.

By Hunhar, Lucknow, c.1760.

Richard Johnson Collection. Purchased 1807.

Inscribed above in Persian: ‘shabeh-i si o sih salagi navab sahib vaqilah khudaigan ‘aziz khan bahadur chaghata’ (a likeness at the age of thirty-three of Nawab Sahib Waqilah Khudaigan ‘Aziz Khan Bahadur Chaghata); numbered 20 in Persian inventory note (partly repeated on reverse); on reverse: ‘‘amal-i hunhar’ (the work of Hunhar); and in nagari:’ Aziz Khan.’

Gouache with gold; on an album leaf with ruled border and margin of plain paper.

205 by 191 mm; page 318 by 192 mm.

Reverse: a portrait drawing.

‘Aziz Khan Bahadur Chaghata, facing left, stands in a field dressed in white with yellow boots, carrying a black sword and shield at his side; uncoloured background.

Note: Hunhar has based this portrait of ‘Aziz Khan Chaghata, an Afghan commander under Aurangzeb (Ali (1966), 235), on a Mughal original which would have been close to J.23, 9, where he is depicted at the age of thirty-two. All Hunhar’s pictures in the Library Collection are male portraits painted in a style that differs little from the eighteenth-century Mughal portraiture of Delhi. A picture by Hunhar in the Victoria and Albert Museum is datable to the Muhammad Shah period, and it seems that he was trained as a Mughal artist (‘see’ J.11, 14) and moved to the Oudh court in later years. He sometimes used the alias ‘Puran Nath’ as in the case of a picture of c.1760 in the Binney Collection (Binney (1973), no.97).