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Catalogue
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Autumn Exhibition 2021
London | 18th October - 27th November 2021With both objects and paintings this exhibition shows works from the early 17th century through to the 19th century. Our online catalogue for this exhibition proposes a small but diverse group of works showing the expertise of the many craftsmen that made them. We welcome visitors to our gallery to view these works, or to contact us for more detailed information. Our online catalogue can be dowloaded through the link above.
Below image is catalogue 2, the Carved Ivory box
Srik Lanka, Kandy, early 17th century, H 13 cm, Dia, 9.5 cm
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Portrait of a princely youth
India, Mughal, c. 1600Opaque watercolour heightened with gold on paper, laid down on a later album page
with inscriptions
Folio 19.3 × 12.8 cm; Painting 18.6 × 15.1 cm
In this sensitive study of a young prince, he stands in the formal court position wearing a diaphanous jama over orange pink paijama and an undershirt. A tie-dyed patka is around his waist with a dagger hanging from it. He wears his jama tied in the Hindu fashion under the left armpit.
Portraits of boys are rare in Mughal painting. Two are in the Jehangir collection in Mumbai (Khandalavala and Chandra 1965, figs. 26–27) and another in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin (Leach 1995, no. 3.69). See also Colnaghi 1976, no. 111, for a portrait of Shah Shuja as a boy. -
Two carved sandstone architectural panels
From the Mughal Jahangir - Shah Jahan periodThis square jalie with flowering trellis design of intersecting ogival tracery. Our jali, fashioned from mottled red sandstone, a stone quarried at various sites in Northern and Central India, is a characteristic feature of 17th century Mughal building traditions. The trellis design is a mirrored fish scale pattern that has a long history of use in both Muslim and Hindu culture. This jali dates from the Mughal, Jahangir – Shah Jahan period, c. 1600–1650 and measures 114 × 96 × 5 cm.
The second architectural element is a carved relief wall panel. This type of Mughal decoration is called chini khana meaning china room. It refers to the small wall niches in which bottles, vases and other vessels are placed and would have been recessed into the walls of a palace, a large mansion or a garden pavilion. The panel comes from the Mughal, Agra area, Jahangir period 1600–1625 and measures 74 × 108 cm
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Double-sided palm leaf folio
Orissa, 18th/19th centuryOpaque pigments on palm leaf
4.5 × 35.5 cm
This refined folio depicts a series of scenes describing the vicissitudes of love on one side, while on the other, a series of charming vignettes illustrate the domestic tasks of palace servants. Palm leaves were used throughout southern India and Orissa as the normal material for writing manuscripts until well into the 19th century. Only in Orissa however did a late school of illustrating then develop. Text and drawings were incised onto the leaves and inked, by having ink smeared over the leaves and the surplus wiped off. Colour was then applied very sparingly. This is a beautiful and elegant example of the style and for similar manuscripts from Orissa, see Losty 1980; Pathy 1990; and Fischer and Pathy 1980. -
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Three groups of rare 18th century hybrid small-swords
Whilst much focus has been given to Indian paintings and textiles made for British patronage, other areas of the decorative arts, produced in India for this clientele, have received less attention. An intriguing group of objects, which warrant further study, is this rare corpus of small-swords, which combine Indian manufactured hilts with European blades.
To view an entire group of these small swords please click here
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