Posthumous portrait of the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah (reigned 1719–1748) holding a falcon (recto)

Cleveland Museum of Art

Posthumous portrait of the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah (reigned 1719–1748) holding a falcon (recto)

Muhammad Rizavi HindiLinkedCulture matchlcp-b49d80e62beb

Date
1764
Medium
Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
Culture
Mughal India, probably Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow
Department
Indian and Southeast Asian Art
Institution
Cleveland Museum of Art
Object ID
170878

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

The artist used the carpet, the floor cushion, and the halo to indicate the royal status of the seated figure. He has turned the picture plane into the space of a window, over the sill of which a golden carpet ornamented with a field of lilies marks his location for outsiders. His signature in Persian, the Mughal lingua franca, interrupts the fringed border. Painted after the emperor’s death and the dissolution of much of the Mughal court, this refined portrait pays tribute to the wealth and power of the imperial past. The archer’s thumb ring is for drawing the bowstring. Perhaps he was left-handed.

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Provenance & credit

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Credit line
Gift in honor of Madeline Neves Clapp; Gift of Mrs. Henry White Cannon by exchange; Bequest of Louise T. Cooper; Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund; From the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection
Provenance
before 1811–1849: Sir Charles Forbes, 7th Baronet [1773–1849], Bengal, London, and Scotland, by descent to his great-grandson, Colonel Sir John Forbes | ?–1962: Colonel Sir John Stewart Forbes [1901–1984], Baronet, DSO, DL, Allargue House, Strathdon, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, UK, consigned to Sotheby's London for sale | December 10, 1962: (Sotheby’s, London, Western and Oriental Manuscripts and Miniatures, 10 December 1962, lot 25, sold to Ralph Benkaim) | 1962–2013: Ralph Benkaim [1914–2001] and Catherine Glynn Benkaim [b. 1946], Beverly Hills, CA, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art | 2013–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

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