A Particularly Fine and Well-Preserved Example of Company Painting in Delhi

PORTRAIT MINIATURE OF BEGUM ZINAT MAHAL

COMPANY PAINTING, DELHI SCHOOL Circa 1840 Watercolor on Ivory 2.5" x 2"

Available

LITERATURE Mildred Archer, Company Paintings Indian Paintings of the British period: Victoria and Albert Museum (Maplin Publishing, 1992)

A particularly fine and well-preserved example of Company Painting in Delhi.

This portrait of Begum Zinat Mahal, the favorite wife of the last Mughal Emperor, was probably meant to bear a strong resemblance to posthumous images of Arjumand Banu Begum, also known as Mumtaz Mahal, the famous beauty and favorite of the great Shah Jahan. When she died in 1631, the Emperor built the Taj Mahal to house her body. Begum Zinat Mahal, like Mumtaz Mahal, was celebrated for her beauty and intelligence. She was the de facto Mughal Empress, and the favorite wife of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal Emperor and the Timurid Dynasty’s final ruler. After the Indian Rebellion of 1857 she accompanied the Bahadur Shah in exile in Rangoon, where she died in poverty in 1886.

Paintings on ivory were almost exclusively produced in Delhi, where this work was made. In the 18th century, with the expansion of the British East India Company into South Asia, the European taste for miniature portraits had a dramatic influence on the way Indian artists painted. Rather than the unbroken lines and solid fields of color so characteristic of early Mughal miniatures, Western pictorial techniques, such as subtle shading and stippling (a way of applying small dots of pigment) were employed in making images for a growing British market. We clearly see that influence at play in this portrait miniature.