Page 211 - March 23 2022 Boinghams NYC Indian and Himalayan Art

THE PROPERTY OF A NORTH AMERICAN COLLECTOR
487
A PAINTING OF A BUSTLING MARKET
EAST INDIA, MURSHIDABAD, CIRCA 1760-1770
13º x 20º in. (33.7 x 51.4 cm.)
$20,000-30,000
PROVENANCE:
Private collection, San Francisco, by 2001.
Thence by descent.
This wondrously detailed scene of a bustling market is related to a known group
of large scale paintings depicting aspects of everyday life in Bengal— ranging
from pilgrimages, royal processions, market scenes and rural landscapes.
These genre paintings are remarkable for their blending of Mughal and
Company school elements, so much that it is difficult to categorize the works
as safely Company style or Provincial Mughal. Commenting on a similar
painting from the Chester Beatty Library ( L. Leach, Mughal and other Paintings
from the Chester Beatty Library, London, 1995, vol 2, ppl 768-778-9, no.7.103),
Linda Leach hypothesizes that the distant panoramas and emphasis on daily
life suggest that the type catered to British taste and that it would appear
that British officials were the main patrons of this type of work. However, the
minute and infinite details of the painting point to its production in a traditional
Mughal miniaturist workshop. Robert Skelton has remarked that the style of
this workshop recalls the work of Dip Chand, a Murshidabad artist active in
the 1760s known to have completed a group of portrait miniatures for William
Fullerton of the East India Company.
Set in front of a modest skyline, an impressive row of verandas sets the tone.
Side by side, every individual lives his or her own life, alone, but together.
The artist shows his mastery of observation and a sensitivity to this bizarre
paradox with countless examples. Men and women manage their shops,
offering anything from scissors, mojari loafers, machetes, paper goods, chai,
and fish. Most individuals in the painting exist tangent to the marketplace. Two
men brawl while their companions cheer them on in the upper right corner.
Noblemen and British officers travel throughout, one by elephant, one by ox-
pulled chariot, some by palanquin, and some by foot. Many men loiter near the
chai shop, one man admires a white textile, a woman in a blue sari walks with
her child, and some men smoke pipes. As though each person a word and each
scenario a sentence, the artist develops a remarkable visual language, far more
competent than the written word, at conveying the complexity, and sometimes
incoherence, of daily life. Indeed, the painting reads like a paragraph, its linear
arrangement resembling a handwritten letter – straight and crooked at the
same time. The care and attention to each facial expression, strand of hair, and
dhoti pleat bear witness to the level of scrunity employed by this workshop.
The breathtaking detail and variety exalt daily life and elevate the ordinary into
the extraordinary.
The present painting compares to a similar pair of paintings published by
Hazlitt, Good and Fox, Indian Painting for British Patrons, 1770-1860, 1991, nos.
3 and 4, and subsequently sold at Sotheby’s London, 23 October 1992, lots
498-499. Two smaller scale paintings at the British library (see T. Falk and M.
Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, London, 1981, pp. 200 and
489, cat. 374 i & ii.), depicting a pilgrimage scene and a rural river landscape
are executed in similar style to the present lot. More recently, paintings of this
school sold at the auction of the Stuart Carey Welch Collection, Sotheby’s
London, 21 May 2011, lot 109 and at Sotheby’s New York, 22 September 2020,
lot 368.