Page 107 - Indian and Himalayan Art, March 15, 2017 Sotheby's NYC
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PROPERTY FROM THE LANIER COLLECTION 1550-1601 Venice circa 1590-1600). An example Shah Jahan style borders. Our present example
of “King David Playing the Harp with Angels has a somewhat rounder portrait-like face and
KING DAVID PLAYS THE HARP Dancing and Playing Music” is in the collection of wispier beard than the two previous examples -
India, Imperial Mughal, rst half of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (accession no. as well some di erences in the colors and dais
the 17th Century 53.601.171). Imperial Mughal painters - beginning placement above the lower landscape. All three
with the royal workshops of Emperor Akbar - had examples are set on plain verdigris backgrounds.
Opaque watercolor heightened with gold on paper absorbed the pictorial in uence of European art
image: 6½ by 4¼ in. (15.2 by 10 cm) via engravings and oil paintings imported into Applied within a Later Eighteenth Century album
folio: 9¼ by 6½ in. (22.8 by 15.2 cm) the Mughal court. Some in uences were stylistic folio with dark blue inner gold- ecked borders
Private collection in the form of naturalistic shading and detail - with gold inner margins between colored ruled
Acquired in the 1990’s however occasionally the in uences were in the lines. Bu /natural gold- ecked outer borders.
form of European portraiture and subjects - often Inscribed above in black ink Urdu script “shab
The gold-crowned Prophet David, seated on an biblical - as in the present example. e mubarak hadrat auliya alai salam” honoring
octagonal dais, robed in purple and gold with blue the Prophet David, on the verdigris ground with
and gold hems, playing an angel-headed harp, There are two other known examples of this another in the outer border at top.
his ngers plucking the strings. On a low green subject, one ascribed to Manohar (The David
landscape with owering blossoms. Enthroned Collection, Copenhagen, inventory no. 31/2001) For a similar work, see Sotheby’s London, 23
against a verdigris background. dated circa 1620-30 - set within borders of a April 1996, lot 8.
Shah Jahan muraqqa’ folio. Another version
Mughal images of the biblical King David was a made in Delhi circa 1800 from the James and $ 12,000-18,000
subject likely inspired by the central section of William Fraser Collection was mounted into later
an engraving by Johann Sadeler I (Netherlands
