A BEJEWELLED LADY HOLDING A WI NE CUP

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This large bust portrait of a woman depicts an idealized Mughal beauty. Her left profile stands out firmly against the grey background. Her forehead is adorned with a strand of pearls ending in a gem-encrusted pearl and gold tikka. The dark arched brow crowns her elongated eye. The dark hair is sensitively painted, from the undulating hairline to the lock across her ear and the hair cascading down her shoulder. Her ear and nose are pierced and adorned with heavy ornaments. The nose-ring is made of two pearls whilst her earring is a large emerald pendant topped with twin pearls. She wears necklaces made of rows of pearls, gold discs and emerald and spinel beads. In her left hand she holds a gold bottle, the spout of which is modelled as a duck head. Her right hand holds a small porcelain wine cup painted with a European figure seated between trees. Her fingertips are dyed with henna. She wears a diaphanous dupatta (veil) decorated with a gold lattice draped over her long dark hair and a diaphanous choli (bodice).

Individual female portraits seem to have become popular during the reign of Shah Jahan, as suggested by the series of paintings commissioned by Dara Shikoh in 1641-42 for the album he presented to his wife Nadira Banu Begum (British Library Add. Or. MS 3129). Bust portraits, borrowed from the

European portrait tradition, were usually reserved for imperial leaders, courtiers or other high-status individuals (see Vogel at https://harvardartmuseums.org/tour/women-in-south-asianart/

slide/10301). This very large bust portrait of this finely dressed lady is a testament of her importance and wealth. This painting combines a bust portrait with a revealing semi-nude. She wears a diaphanous bodice that reveals her naked breasts. Partially nude portraits appear to have originated in the 17th century and have been a particularly popular format in the 18th century. Since no male artist could

have access to the women in the imperial harem due to the strict practice of pardah (female seclusion), this painting may well be an allegorical expression of a queen’s perfect beauty, such as the portrait of Arjumand Banu Begum Mumtaz Mahal dated to 1628 (Freer Gallery of Art, F2005.4). John Seyller

suggested that bare-chested depictions of royal Mughal ladies originated from a Dutch print of the Allegory of Poetry by Cornelius Drebbel after Hendrik Goltzius circa 1590-1604 (British Museum, 1936,0110.3). However, in her essay Women in South Asia Rachel Vogel notes that by the 18th century

the eroticism attached to this genre of painting had probably supplanted the allegorical meaning. J.P. Losty argues that the presence of a wine cup, here together with a gold wine flask, and the henna applied to the hands are indications that this painting depicts a courtesan (Losty 2020, cat.4).

Exquisitely painted on a large sheet of paper, this painting belongs to a small number of large-scale portraits of royal women or courtesans executed by celebrated artists. It is particularly close to two paintings attributed to the artist Hunhar II, a leading artist of Emperor Muhammad Shah’s atelier

active in circa 1730-80. A sister painting to this work by Hunhar II, is in the Art Institute of Chicago, which was probably executed in circa 1730-40. It was tentatively described as a portrait of Jahanzeb Banu Begum (d. 1705), consort of Azam Shah, who briefly became emperor in 1707. This painting,

however, is likely to have been produced slightly later than the Chicago painting, in the 1740s. Another painting of a lady wearing a male turban by Hunhar II, with facial features closely related to this portrait, is in a private collection (Losty 2022, cat.9). It compares to other important portraits such as a

Young woman by Anup Chattar in the Jagdish Mittal Collection, Hyderabad, dated to circa 1640-50 (Seyller 2013, cat.26, pp.80-81), a Lady with a wine cup, dated to circa 1650 in a Private Collection (Pal 1983, M28, p.145), a Bikaner Princess Holding a Wine Flask, dated to circa 1700 in the Museum of

Fine Arts, Houston (64.2025); and Lady holding narcissi by Muhammad Afzal, circa 1740 (British Library, Johnson 11, no.2).

This page was formerly mounted in an album, as suggested by its reverse, decorated with Persian verses. These portraits were avidly collected by Europeans such as Antoine Polier as early as the second half of the ƒˆth century. This painting purportedly reached the collection of famed female collector Martine de Béhague, Comtesse de Béarn, whose collection was dispersed in a number of sales, from as early as 1928.