A stallion and its Sikh groom
Delhi, or possibly Punjab, circa 1850
gouache on watermarked paper, black margin rules, laid down on a separate sheet
painting 200 x 333 mm.; sheet 260 x 422 mm.
Footnotes:
Provenance
Formerly in a private collection, Paris, until 2018.

This almost enigmatic, calm painting, with the groom - most probably a Sikh, with his turban and bangle (kara) - with his back to us, unusually, combines eastern Indian, Calcutta style with that of Mughal Delhi.

The horse and groom, together with the strip of misty landscape halfway up the painting, reminds us of Shaykh Muhammad Amir of Karraya, flourishing between 1830 and 1850. The black frame around the painting also suggests Bengal. The tree acts as a repoussoir device first found in earlier Murshidabad painting (see for example a painting of circa 1825 illustrated in M. Archer, Company Paintings: Indian Paintings of the British Period, London 1992, pp. 100-110, no. 74(3)), which casts shadow across the foreground in the 'Picturesque' manner derived from western painting. The horse and the groom, however, seem more to be Delhi work in the continuing late Mughal tradition. It is not at all unlikely that the artists of eastern India turned up in Delhi and its environs: after Sita Ram's visit to Delhi in 1815, Delhi artists painted their topographical subjects in a more 'Picturesque' manner (see J. P. Losty, Sita Ram: Picturesque Views of India: Lord Hastings's Journey from Calcutta to the Punjab, 1814-15, New Delhi 2015 (co-published as Sita Ram's Painted Views of India, London 2015).