Deer, birds and flowering trees, India, Mughal, probably Fatehpur Sikri, circa 1570

gouache on cloth, reverse blank




26.8 by 18.4cm. (10 9/16 by 7 ¼ in.)

with border: 27.5 by 19cm. (10 ¹³⁄₁₆ by 7 ½ in.)

Provenance

Acquired by Cary Welch by 1980-81

Literature

M. Brand and G. Lowry, Akbar’s India: Art from the Mughal City of Victory, New York, 1985, p.80, no.43

M. Fraser, Selected Works from the Stuart Cary Welch Collection of Indian and Islamic Art, London, 2015, cat.9, pp.38-41

Exhibited

Akbar’s India: Art from the Mughal City of Victory, Asia Society Galleries, New York; Harvard University Art Museums; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 1985-86

The Sea in a Jug: The Welch Collection of Islamic and Later Indian Art, Colby Museum of Art, Maine, 2020

Catalogue note

This is an important Mughal painting associated with Akbar’s period at Fatehpur Sikri in the 1570s-80s and is a very rare example of early Mughal painting on cloth.




Apart from the great series of large paintings of the Hamzanama of the 1560s and 1570s, very few Akbar-period Mughal paintings on cloth are known. The most famous is a very large painting known as The Princes of the House of Timur, circa 1550-55, in the British Museum, which is over a metre square (see, inter alia, Canby 1994). On a smaller scale akin to the present example are Two Rosy Pastors, circa 1570-80 (see Brand and Lowry 1985, no.45, p.80; Beach 1987, fig.13, p.28); A Family of Cheetahs, circa 1575-85 (Brand and Lowry 1985, no.46, p.81; Beach 1987, fig.14, p.29); A Chukar Partridge (Lowry and Beach 1988, cat.405, pp.334-5); a group of seven illustrations to a Devi Mahatmaya series, circa 1565-75 (Goswamy 2004, pp.56-66), and ten illustrations to a Falnama, circa 1580 (Falk and Digby 1979, nos.1-4, pp.15-17; Sotheby’s, London, 1 May 2019, lot 97 for auction references). It is worth noting that all of these smaller examples date from circa 1565-80, exactly the period when the Hamzanama was being produced.




The composition of the present work is divided into two parts by a rocky ridge that runs diagonally from the mid-left to the lower right. In the upper part a large, elaborate tree laden with blossom and fruit grows from the rocky ridge. In the tree are four large and colourful birds. In the lower part below the ridge are blossoming bushes and another large, colourful bird, and at left are a blackbuck and doe.




The main tree is imaginary - a hybrid featuring pomegranates, pink flowers and two different types of leaves. The pomegranates appear to grow from the branches with clusters of long lanceolate leaves, as do the orange pomegranate buds, whereas the five-petalled pink and white flowers grow from the branches with shorter lobed leaves. The lanceolate leaves that cluster round the pomegranates are not those found on real pomegranate trees, but resemble more closely those of a mango tree. The over-sized birds are also imaginary. Brand and Lowry suggested that this miniature depicts flora and fauna around Fatehpur Sikri mixed with elements of myth (Brand and Lowry 1985, p.79). More specifically it can be linked to several of the carved sandstone panels within the palace complex at Fatehpur Sikri (for illustrations of relevant stonework see Brand and Lowry 1985, pp.12, 106; Gupta and Israni 2013, p.106; Nath 1999, figs.1-2, pp.151-2). The tree also seems to echo aspects of the iconography of the Waq-Waq Tree and other magical or mythical trees. A tree with very similar fruit, leaves and birds can be found in the well-known large-scale Safavid Falnama manuscript of the mid-16^th century (Farhad and Baçgi 2009, no.45, p.169).




A stylistically related depiction of rocks can be found in the Hamzanama and the Cleveland Tutinama of the 1560s (e.g. Seyller 2004, no.21, p.87; Tutinama, ff.146a, 168b, 215a, see Cleveland Museum website for complete set of illustrations), as well as in the Devi Mahatmaya series mentioned above (Goswamy 2004, figs.5-6).




The entry in the 1985 exhibition catalogue for Akbar’s India, Art from the Mughal City of Victory was as follows:




“While this highly decorative flowering pomegranate tree stands in contrast to the expressionistic exuberance of Basawan’s extraordinary tree in his contemporary study of a cow and calf, it nevertheless displays the same keen interest in the natural world. This can also be seen in the numerous examples of Indian flora singled out for illustration in the imperial copies of the Baburnama. Here, the unidentified artist has added multicolored birds that appear to have migrated straight from the realm of myth to this amusing conjunction of reality and fantasy.” (Brand and Lowry 1985, no.43, p.147).