Page 94 - Indian and Himalayan Art Mar 21, 2018 NYC

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PORTRAIT OF SIRI RAJA SHUDAO, AN ATTENDANT TO THE
BURMESE AMBASSADOR TO DELHI
‘FRASER ALBUM’ ARTIST, DELHI, CIRCA 1815-20
Opaque watercolor on paper, inscribed in nasta’liq above ‘Siri Raja
Sudao’, laid down on card, the reverse in black devanagari ‘cheen ra admi
hai’ (This man is from China), Bikaner Library stamp and signature of
Khet Singh, August 1964, mounted
Painting 8¿ x 6¿ in. (20.2 x 15.4 cm.); folio 11Ω x 8Ω (29.3 x 21.5 cm.)
$40,000-60,000
PROVENANCE
Collections of the Maharajas of Bikaner, 1964.
Siva Swaminathan collection, Dorset.

The same fgure appears in two larger compositions by the ‘Fraser Artist’, of watercolors. This group of over ninety drawings by Indian artists, discovered
one in the Metropolitan Museum, inv. no. 09.227.1, the other, from the Fraser amongst the Fraser Papers in 1979, is arguably one of the fnest groups of
Album that was commissioned between 1815-1819, now in the Louvre Abu Company School pictures yet known.
Dhabi (Mildred Archer and Toby Falk, India Revealed, The Art and Adventures
of James and William Fraser 1801-1835, 1989, p. 104, no. 82, second from The Fraser Album drawings are amongst the earliest of Company School
right). Archer and Falk note that King Bodawpaya (r.1801-1835) sent out works. The names of the artists are not known, but the collection represents
embassies in the hope of forming alliances to check the growing power of the diverse range of people to be seen in Delhi and its environs and includes
the British East India Company. Embassies were sent in 1807, 1808, 1813 and portraits of the Emperor, his courtiers, dancing girls, musicians, Afghan horse-
1817; it is probable that Siri Raja Shudao was a member of that fnal embassy. dealers, ascetics and villagers bringing in their rent. Local costumes, customs,
In addition to his native Burmese costume he has added an elegant Indian architecture and scenery, are recorded in exquisite detail. The brothers also
Kashmir sash tied around his waist. It is somehow ironic that he is depicted in commissioned works while travelling through the Himalayas on their return
a style that quintessentially represents the power that he was part of a mission from the Nepal War (1814-15). The present painting is a good example of the
to try to limit. breadth of their interest.
William Fraser (1783-1835) was employed in the East India Company from his These drawings have ‘not only made a great contribution to knowledge of
arrival in Bengal in 1799, until his assassination in Delhi in 1835. His brother the work of Indian artists in early nineteenth-century Delhi, but provide an
James Baillie Fraser (1783-1856), an amateur artist and author, joined him in unsurpassed record of life in and around the old Mughal capital before chaos
India in 1814. Between 1815 and 1820 the brothers commissioned a collection and the new British administration brought that rich culture to an end’ (Archer
and Falk, op.cit. p. 57).

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