The Royal Couple Engaged in Love Lot n° 47

Specifications: Watercolor on Paper 13.6 inches x 10.5 inches A highly accomplished miniature rendered in the late eighteenth century idiom of Mughal art style, as practiced at Oudh, a provincial headquarter of Mughals acclaiming independence after Mughal power waned in eighteenth century, this contemporary work of art reproduces with unique skill and in absolute exactness not merely the art-style of those bygone days but also a true picture of the priorities of feudatory at Lucknow like centres of Mughal sub-power. The artist seems to have created his theme by assimilating the face of life as it reflects in a number of miniatures of those days painted at Lucknow like centres of art. Love, made inside the quilt, or after putting it aside, was hardly a private matter, and its display, and even pictorial documentation, was immensely favoured and prided on. In one of his best known short stories ‘Shataranja ke Khilari’, the legendry Hindi writer Munshi Prem Chand draws an identical sketch of feudal life at Lucknow. Engaged in the game of chess Wazid Ali Shah, its Nawab, even after reports of an invasion reach him, does not leave the game for attending the peril facing his land preferring losing the State but not the round of chess he was playing. The painting is contained within a broad border – almost half of the canvas space, designed with floral plant-motifs – three leaves and three flowers, much in the style of miniatures from the period of Jahangir, a cult also followed by the artists of Shahjahan’s court. Symmetrically laid and uniformly conceived, the flower-plants may not be treated as realistic but they are also not stylized or arabesque-type. Despite a pale opaque background and repetition of the same form all across, these flower-motifs do not breathe a feeling of monotony. The actual painting, within the frame, portrays a young handsome prince as engaged in making love with his consort in his bed-chamber. Besides w