Maidens at a firework festival, accompanied by a servant
Provincial Mughal, Oudh, perhaps Faizabad, circa 1760-80
gouache and gold on paper, laid down on an album page with gold-decorated borders, verso, a calligraphic panel copied by Abd al-Rahim Rawshan Qalam al-Harawi, Persia, dated AH 1022/AD 1613-14 consisting of two couplets of Persian verses written diagonally within cloudbands on a gold ground, illuminated cornerpieces
painting 180 x 111 mm.; calligraphic panel 110 x 55 mm.; album page 381 x 260 mm.
Footnotes:
Provenance
Private collection, London.

The subject depicted here is found frequently in Oudh and provincial Mughal painting from the middle of the 18th Century - partly because of the significance of such festivals during the year, but also because of its appeal as an aristocratic pursuit, and its obvious aesthetic appeal to both painter and connoisseur, with the opportunity for the former to depict extravagant displays against dark skies and reflected in water.

The festival of Shab-barat is held on the fourteenth day of the month of Shaban, 'on which a vigil is observed with prayers, feastings and illuminations, and Muslims make offerings and oblations in the names of ancestors. On this night the lives and fortunes of mortals for the coming year are registered in heaven' (J. P. Losty, L. Y. Leach, Mughal Paintings from the British Library, London, n.d., no. 17 (illustrating and discussing a painting of 1735-40 from the Johnson Album: see T. Falk, M. Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, London 1981, no. 171). For other examples of the same (probable) subject, see a work of 1730-40 in the San Diego Museum of Art, Edwin Binney III Collection; illustrated in W. Dalrymple and Y. Sharma (edd.), London 2012, p. 87, no. 15. The festivities are typically shown on a lakeside terrace (as in the works cited above).

The calligraphic page verso consists of two couplets from a ghazal of Khaqani (d. Tabriz, between 1186 and 1199), copied by Abd al-Rahim Rawshan Qalam al-Harawi, and dated AH 1022/AD 1613-14. Other pages copied by him in this sale are in lots 24A and 66.