Johnson 67,3

A prince hawking.

Golconda, c.1610-20.

Richard Johnson Collection. Purchased 1807.

Numbered 1 in Persian inventory note.

Gouache with gold; on an album page with inner border of gold arabesques and blue margin flecked with gold.

296 by 220 mm; page 400 by 285 mm.

Reproduced: W.G. Archer (1960), pl.17; PinderWilson (1976), no.170; Losty (1986). 45.

A prince wearing a full-length green jama with a long ‘patka’ and a richly decorated sash rides a chestnut stallion. The prince looks back at a ‘chenar’ tree in which several birds are possible prey for the falcon which flutters on his right hand. He is preceded by a ‘sais’ carrying a straight sword, an axe and a bundle tied on his shoulders; a black and white hound walks alongside. A formalised stream with rocky verges runs from the left side of the picture across the foreground through a flowery meadow banded at the top by a broken ridge of pink rocks. In the background a town and trees are set against a gold sky with Chinese clouds.

Note: While there are Bijapuri derivatives in this picture, notably the costume of the prince with the elaborate sash ends, the dominant features of the landscape are archaic in a manner that is associated with the Bukhara style as practised at Golconda. A manuscript of Hatifi’s ‘Shirin u Khusrau’ dated AH976/AD1568-69, dedicated to Ibrahim Qutb Shah of Golconda (Bankipore Library, Patna, Pers. MS 223, Ross (1908), II, 114-16) has seven illustrations in this Bukhara style where the rocks and other features compare closely. Johnson Album 28, no.6 (Robinson (1976), no.921) also illustrates the Bukhara influence in the landscape details. A smaller picture of a galloping horseman (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, no.377142), is probably the work of the same artist.