Ghulam 'Ali Khan and his Last Patron: the Mughal Prince Fakhruddin

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GHULAM ‘ALI KHAN AND HIS LAST PATRON: THE MUGHAL PRINCE

FAKHRUDDIN

©J.P. Losty 2014

Fig. 1. Mirza Fakhruddin entertained by musicians in a salon at the Zafar Mahal in Mehrauli. Attributed to the

artist Ghulam ‘Ali Khan (active 1817-52) and assistants. Delhi, circa 1852, Opaque pigments heightened with

gold and silver on paper, 45.2 by 57 cm. Image courtesy Brendan Lynch and Oliver Forge.

Two important late Mughal pictures from the hand of Ghulam ‘Ali Khan, albeit probably

with some studio assistance, have lately appeared on the art market. The subject of the first is

a Mughal prince, identifiable from his portraits as Mirza Fakhruddin (1816-56), a younger

son but favourite of the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah II known as Zafar (reg. 1838-58)

seated with women and musicians in an Indianized version of a Victorian salon (fig. 1).

Fig, 2. Detail of fig. 1.

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The second is a smaller equestrian portrait of the same prince accompanied by retainers in a

landscape (see fig. 25) that intriguingly can be seen hanging above the chimneypiece in the

main salon picture (fig. 2).

THE SUBJECT

Though our painting bears no inscriptions, it almost certainly represents Mirza Fakhruddin

(1816-1856) in a salon of the Mughal summer palace, or Zafar Mahal, outside Delhi at

Mehrauli, near the Qutb Minar complex. The younger prince seated on the carpet is probably

Fakhruddin’s eldest son, Mirza Abu Bakht. Both man and boy are clearly princes of the royal

line judging from the emerald and pearl necklaces that they are wearing. The two men on the

right are not seated on carpets and would seem to be retainers. The two women to the left of

the prince are seated on a carpet and hence of some importance, while a female attendant sits

on the floor beside them. Four musicians are seated in front of them. Two are playing

tamburas (strangely left-handed!), one a sarangi, and the last a double-ended drum. Two

standing attendants complete the ensemble.1 The prince holds the snake of a magnificent

silver huqqa and a long pointed implement in the other (fig. 3).

Fig.3. Detail of fig. 1. Fig. 4. Detail of fig. 1.

Before him are the usual paraphernalia of such scenes – pandan, spittoon and a bowl of

garlands with which to reward the musicians (fig. 4) – while one of the women has the same

things. Two Europeans are depicted in oval portrait miniatures above the mantelpiece (figs.

5-6). The one on the left (damaged and difficult to distinguish) might show Sir Thomas

Theophilus Metcalfe, the British Agent at Delhi 1835-53, with whom Mirza Fakhruddin had

1 Antony Kurtz has kindly pointed out that these are tamburas, not sitars, as originally thought.

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formed an alliance.2 He is already going bald in a portrait miniature of 1824 recently

identified as possibly of him (fig. 7). That on the right is possibly one of Metcalfe’s

assistants. It does not seem to resemble the other possible candidates, James Thomason,

Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces, or Sir Henry Miers Elliot, Foreign

Secretary to the Government of India, with whom Mirza Fakhruddin and Metcalfe had been

negotiating over the future of the royal house.

Fig. 5. Detail of fig. 1. Fig. 6. Detail of fig. 1..

Fig. 7. An East India Company political representative, possibly Thomas Theophilus Metcalfe. By Jivan Ram,

Agra, 1824. Collection of Joyce and Kenneth Robbins.

2 An oil painting once at the Begum Samru’s palace in Sardhana is believed to be of Sir Thomas Theophilus

Metcalfe of the Bengal Civil Service (see Sir Evan Cotton, The Sardhana Pictures at Government House,

Allahabad, Allahabad, 1934, pl.4). Most of Metcalfe’s possessions and portraits were destroyed in 1857 when

his house was ransacked, so portraits of him are rare. A portrait miniature on ivory by Jivan Ram dated 1824 of

an East India Company man, probably Metcalfe, has recently been identified: see J.P. Losty, ‘Raja Jivan Ram: a

Professional Indian Portrait Painter of the Early Nineteenth Century’, eBLJ, forthcoming, fig. 19.

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The two oval portraits hanging above the cornice represent Fakhruddin himself wearing a

court turban and an unidentified Indian lady (figs. 8-9). These would appear to be framed oil

paintings of Indian sitters of a type that had begun to appear from the 1830s, painted by

artists such as Raja Jivan Ram and Ghulam Husayn Khan.3

Fig. 8. Detail of fig. 1. Fig. 9. Detail of fig. 1.

The identification of Mirza Fakhruddin as the central character is based on his portraits in

five other paintings. In 1838 Ghulam ‘Ali Khan produced at least three nearly identical

versions of an accession portrait of Bahadur Shah Zafar (reg. 1838-58) (fig. 10). The

Emperor is seated on a lion-throne and flanked by two of his sons: the favourite Mirza

Fakhruddin and a much younger son Mirza Farkhunda (c.1830-42).4

3 See Losty forthcoming.

4 The signed version is in the Art and History Trust, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, see William

Dalrymple and Yuthika Sharma, Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi, 1707-1857, Asia Society Museum, New

York, 2012, no. 79; version two is in the Khalili Collection, London, see L.Y. Leach, Paintings from India: the

Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, vol. VIII, Nour Foundation, London, 1998, no. 45; and for version

three, formerly in the Knellington Collection, Cambridge, Mass., and now in the Museum for Islamic Art, Doha,

see S. Welch, India :Art and Culture 1300-1900, New York, 1985, no. 284.

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Fig. 10. Bahadur Shah II enthroned between Mirza Fakhruddin and Mirza Farkhunda. Attributed to Ghulam

‘Ali Khan, 1838. Khalili Collection, London, MSS 987, after Leach 1998.

Even in the 19th

century, people do not appear in Mughal paintings accidentally or without

forethought as to their positions. The eldest son Mirza Dara Bakht (1790-1849) has been

deliberately excluded from this accession portrait in order to emphasise the claims of the then

favourite Fakhruddin. In these accession portraits, the twenty-two year old prince stands on

his father’s right, a handsome wide-eyed figure of solemn mien with fine features apart from

an overlarge nose, a neat moustache, and arched eyebrows, and is recognisable as the same

figure now in his thirties in the present painting.

Mirza Fakhruddin also appears to the right of the emperor along with Mirza Farkhunda in

two other durbar scenes of the court of Bahadur Shah II of c. 1839, again emphasising that

these two princes were Bahadur Shah’s favourite sons at this time (fig. 11).5

5 In the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, see Linda Yorke Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the

Chester Beatty Library, Vol. II, London, 1995, no. 8.58, p. 812; and the San Diego Museum of Art, 1990.402,

see Thomas W. Lentz, Jr., ‘Edwin Binney, 3rd

(1925-1986),’ in American Collections of Asian Art, ed. P. Pal,

Marg Publications, Bombay, 1986, pp. 93-116, fig. 14.

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Fig. 11. Durbar of Bahadur Shah II. Delhi, 1839. Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Ind 69,4, after Leach 1995.

His official heir, Mirza Dara Bakht, recognised by the British as the Heir-Apparent, stands on

the other and less favoured side of the emperor along with Mirza Shah Rukh, older than

Fakhruddin but the son of a less favoured wife or even concubine.

The identification of the younger prince seated next to Mirza Fakhruddin in our painting as

his eldest son Mirza Abu Bakht (born before 1835, died 22 September 1857) is conjectural as

there are no known portraits of him at this age. He bears, however, a close resemblance to

Mirza Fakhruddin and the figure is the right age for a boy in his late teens. The identity of

the attendant nearer to the princes has been suggested to be Mirza Ilahe Bakhsh (1809-78),

the prince’s father-in-law and leader of the pro-British party at court, but the fact that both he

and his neighbour sit on the white floor spread and not in a more honourable place on a carpet

belies this suggestion, since Ilahe Bakhsh too was a prince of the imperial line.6

The two women seated on the carpet appear to be ladies of high status and in particular the

younger character seated to Mirza Fakhruddin’s right against the yellow bolster has the same

princely paraphernalia of huqqa, pandan and spittoon as Mirza Fakhruddin, while next to her

the lady in white counts her prayer beads. The large round box at the feet of the older woman

is no doubt full of replacement pan and other necessities. The third female figure off the

carpet is their lady’s companion.7

6 Shahzada Muhammad Hidayat Afza, Ilahi Bakhsh Bahadur, was descended on both sides from Bahadur Shah

I. This earlier identification was on the basis of a portrait in the two durbar scenes of c. 1839 in the Chester

Beatty Library, Dublin (fig. 11), and in the Binney collection in the San Diego Museum, the second figure from

the left in each, but both paintings in fact bear inscriptions identifying the man as Bakhshi Muhammad ‘Ali

Khan (in nagari in the Beatty portrait and in nasta’liq in the San Diego one). See Leach 1995, no. 8.58, p. 812,

and Lentz 1986, fig. 14, p. 109. 7 While they have been previously tentatively identified as Shahzadi Sarwar Sultan Begum Sahiba, Mirza

Fakhru’s third wife and the daughter of Ilahe Baksh whom he married in April 1852, and her mother, Abadi

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Fig. 12. Detail of fig. 1.

It would, however, be unthinkable for Mughal ladies to be seen in public company with the

prince’s male attendants and musicians, so that they are almost certainly high-class

courtesans or tawaifs, women of many talents including singing, dancing and poetic

composition, whose services commanded a high price in late Mughal Delhi and Lucknow and

who expected to be treated with due respect even by princes. A splendid painting of such

women in the San Diego Museum of Art, perhaps by Ghulam ‘Ali Khan himself, shows the

princely state in which they lived and how they expected to be treated if they actually visited

a client.8

Fig. 13. An off-duty group of tawaif. Delhi, perhaps by Ghulam ‘Ali Khan, 1830-40. San Diego Museum of

Art, 1990, 385.

Begum Sahiba, this is on the basis of the identification of Ilahe Bakhsh in the painting which has been here

rejected. For a complete list of Bahadur Shah’s wives and family see

http://www.royalark.net/India4/delhi20.htm. 8 There too the senior lady has a large round box full of replacement necessities for the pandan. See B.N., and

Smith, Caron, Domains of Wonder: Selected Masterworks of Indian Painting, San Diego Museum of Art, 2005,

no. 117, but surely second quarter of the 19th

century, not first as in the catalogue.

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The setting of the room in which the prince and his entourage are painted with a view of three

marble domes outside the window is very specific, and in fact thanks to the researches of

Robert Alderman it can be identified as an upper room in the Zafar Mahal at Mehrauli. This

was the summer palace of the last Emperor away from the heat in Delhi, built close to the

shrine of the Chishti Sufi saint Bakhtiyar Khaki or Qutb Saheb as he was affectionately called

from his dargah being so close to the Qutb Minar. There is little doubt about the setting of

the painting for though the Zafar Mahal is now in ruins, comparable rooms still recognisably

exist on the first floor in what were the private apartments. In one such room (fig. 14) the

floor has collapsed but the comparable fireplace insert and chimneypiece are still there

positioned half way up the surviving wall.

Fig. 14. Ruins of the Zafar Mahal and the Moti Masjid of Bahadur Shah I. Image courtesy J. Robert Alderman.

The domes seen through the balcony doors in the painting are those of the Moti Masjid, or

Pearl Mosque, built by Bahadur Shah I in the early eighteenth century and containing within

its precincts the tombs of the later Mughal rulers. The artist has ‘gilded the lily’ a little,

plating the marble domes with gold, but the three domes are recognisably in the same

position (fig. 15). This is where Bahadur Shah II Zafar had already prepared his own tomb,

which still however lies empty awaiting his body’s return from Rangoon.

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Fig. 15. Tomb of Bahadur Shah I and his Moti Masjid at Mehrauli. By Sita Ram, 1814-15. British Library,

London, Add.Or.4311.

The two pairs of closed wooden doors in the painting on either side of the chimneypiece can

be seen to be in front of an external wall and behind them were possibly shallow cupboards

housing precious objects. Along the long wall of the room in fig. 14 are the two doorways

leading at the moment to empty air (fig. 16), but being doorways rather than windows must

originally have led to something: if the room in the painting is the same one, then they

flanked a mirror with a gilded frame and apparently led to a gallery round a courtyard (see

fig. 1).

Fig. 16. Ruins of the Zafar Mahal. Image courtesy J. Robert Alderman.

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THE ARTIST

Ghulam ‘Ali Khan is one of the most intriguing of all Indian painters. During his long career

(active 1817-52) he developed different styles suited to the taste and requirements of his

patrons.9 He was the originator of the Delhi topographical school with his painting of the

Divan-i Khas in the Delhi palace in 1817 that is still mostly in a Mughal tradition.10

He was

also the first Mughal artist to exploit the trend towards the picturesque in other paintings such

as the shrine at Panipat and an exterior view of the Red Fort, both dated 1822, in which he

places the Mughal buildings of Delhi in their ‘picturesque’ surroundings, works presumably

painted for a British clientele.11

Ghulam ‘Ali Khan’s poor command of figural drawing in

these otherwise exquisite early architectural studies indicates that it is impossible for him to

have been the major artist of the Fraser Albums as has often been suggested, especially since

his earliest known portraits of Akbar II (reg. 1806-37) and his son Mirza Salim (1799-1836),

both in ivory and now in the British Library, date from as late as 1827-28 (figs. 17-18).12

These are his first known works done definitely for the Mughal court and the Persian

inscriptions refer to him as ‘His Majesty’s painter’.

Figs. 17 and 18. Mirza Salim (left) and the Emperor Akbar II (right). By Ghulam ‘Ali Khan, Delhi, 1827-28.

British Library, London, Add.Or.2539 and 2538.

9 For an overview of his career, see Yuthika Sharma, ‘In the Company of the Mughal Court: Delhi Painter

Ghulam Ali Khan’ in Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi, 1707-1857, ed. William Dalrymple and Yuthika

Sharma, Asia Society Museum, New York, 2012, pp. 44-51. 10

British Library, see J.P. Losty and Malini Roy, Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire – Manuscripts and

Paintings in the British Library, London, 2012, pp. 217-19, fig. 153. 11

British Library and a private collection, see Sharma, op. cit., figs. 2 and 3. The whole movement is examined

in J.P. Losty, Delhi: Red Fort to Raisina, New Delhi. 2012, pp. 14–86. 12

Both in the British Library, Losty and Roy op. cit., pp. 219-20, figs. 154-55.

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These two portraits show the Emperor and his son seated in more or less identical positions

and equal in all things save for the nimbus round the Emperor’s head. The artist is here

experimenting with a more naturalistic style of portraiture based on the European models he

would have seen in Delhi. Nonetheless, as in earlier Mughal paintings, such portraits make

political statements. Akbar II wanted his favourite son Mirza Salim to succeed him, not his

eldest son Mirza Abu Zafar Sirajuddin, and these portraits which were sent to the Governor-

General Lord Amherst were meant to reinforce this through their equality of treatment of the

sitters. He was made to give way in the face of British insistence on primogeniture and the

rights of the eldest son, who in fact succeeded as Bahadur Shah II. Primogeniture had never

been the Mughal way, when those princes surviving their father’s or indeed grandfather’s

death traditionally and literally fought to the death.

During the 1820s Ghulam ‘Ali Khan was inspired by the painters who worked on the Fraser

Album to explore the possibilities of portraiture and landscape in a more naturalistic vein in

which he produced some of his most original work. In the 1820s his primary patron was

Colonel James Skinner. Three large watercolour paintings in the National Army Museum,

London, illustrate Skinner’s pivotal role as founder and colonel of the irregular cavalry

regiment of Skinner’s Horse, painted both in durbar and in review, and also Skinner’s life as

a member of the landed gentry showing day-to-day life on his estate outside of Delhi near

Hansi.13

At this time Ghulam ‘Ali Khan also worked with other artists on the various

manuscripts of James Skinner’s compendia of Indian castes and of Indian rulers, as well as at

least one album (see figs. 28-29).14

Ghulam ‘Ali Khan’s next known works for the imperial court are not until 1838, when he

produced the three versions of an accession portrait of Bahadur Shah Zafar flanked by his

two favourite sons (fig. 10). Here again the patron uses the artist to make political

statements. Despite his treatment at the hands of his father, who constantly denigrated him

for his unsuitability to succeed to the throne, Bahadur Shah meted out much the same kind of

treatment to his eldest son Mirza Dara Bakht, since he wanted a younger son, the then

favourite Mirza Fakhruddin, to succeed him. Again Ghulam ‘Ali Khan’s composition

demonstrates his full awareness of the political significance of the choice and groupings of

the characters.

During the 1840s Ghulam ‘Ali Khan seems to have left the impoverished Mughal court to

work for other Indian patrons. For Maharao Raja Binne Singh of Alwar (reg. 1815-57), he

contributed paintings to an illustrated manuscript of the Gulistan of Sa’di now in the Alwar

Museum that shows his mastery of traditional Mughal composition and technique for the

illustration of manuscripts, combined with the architectural views that he had perfected for

his European patrons in Delhi. This last great example of the illustrated Mughal manuscript

was in production 1840-53.15

Mirza Fakruddin and company is a work from the last years of

Ghulam ‘Ali Khan’s career and compares closely to his paintings produced for another local

13

Dalrymple and Sharma op. cit., pp. 144-49, nos. 58-60. 14

See Losty and Roy 2012, pp. 221-18. 15

Sharma op. cit., pp. 46-50.

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patron, the Nawab of Jhajjar ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan (reg. 1845-57), particularly two splendid

court scenes from 1849 and 1852 in the British Library (see figs. 22-23) and an extraordinary

image of the Nawab astride his pet tiger datable 1849-50 in the Cynthia Polsky collection.16

THE ICONOGRAPHY OF THE PAINTING

The year 1852 was one of turmoil at Zafar’s court. Mirza Fakhruddin had become the

obvious heir on the death of his eldest brother, Mirza Dara Bakht, in 1849. For the first time

in the nineteenth century the emperor’s favourite for the succession and the British obsession

with primogeniture coincided. His most powerful enemy, however, was one of his father’s

younger wives, Zinat Mahal, who ruthlessly pursued the interests of her own young son

Mirza Jawan Bakht in becoming the heir apparent and had indeed persuaded the Emperor to

grant this wish. Her machinations resulted in 1852 in the most lavish wedding seen by the

impoverished Mughal court for many years, when the eleven-year old prince was married to

his cousin, in an attempt to dazzle the British.17

There was, however, no chance of this

succeeding when the British were intent on holding on to the primacy of primogeniture, for

favourite sons as they had just seen could quickly be succeeded by another in their father’s

affections and the British could not tolerate such uncertainty. It was not until this same year,

however, three years after the death of Dara Bakht, that the British officially acknowledged

Mirza Fakhruddin as Heir-Apparent, or Mirza Wali ‘Ahad Bahadur. These three years had

been spent by the prince bolstering his position in negotiations with the British led by the

Agent at the Delhi court Sir Thomas Theophilus Metcalfe. In return for his recognition,

Fakhruddin agreed that upon his father’s death he would vacate the Red Fort in Delhi (long

coveted by the East India Company’s army as a military base), meet the Governor-General on

terms of equality at all times, and move his court to the summer palace at Mehrauli. This

new nail in the coffin of Mughal sovereignty not unnaturally caused furious resentment in the

palace, not only in the breast of Zinat Mahal but also in that of the prince’s father, the aged

Emperor, who now disowned Fakhruddin. But resentment was all it could be in the face of

the implacable British campaign to strip the Emperors not only of their function but also of

their ancestral dignities. Fakhruddin would have succeeded on these terms had he not

succumbed to cholera in 1856, when the British decided to allow the imperial title to lapse.18

A close examination of the setting of the painting reveals an iconography meant to proclaim

this new political dispensation. The setting where Mirza Fakhruddin has chosen to be

portrayed is the Zafar Mahal, where he seems to have taken refuge from his father’s wrath

and which would be his appointed place of residence when he succeeded. What is most

significant about the iconography is probably what is missing. The central and most

important of the portraits above the mantelpiece, directly over the vertical axis of the

composition and the prince’s head, is hidden behind a green hanging lamp. This would

almost certainly have been of the prince’s father, Bahadur Shah Zafar himself (fig. 19).

16

Losty and Roy op. cit., pp. 230-32, figs. 165-66, and Dalrymple and Sharma op. cit., pp. 172-73, no. 76. 17

William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal: the Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857, Bloomsbury, London, 2006, pp.

26-32. 18

The Cambridge History of India, vol. 5, British India, ed. E.J. Rapson, Cambridge 1927, pp. 607-08.

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Fig. 19. Detail of fig. 1.

This presumption is based on the model of another interior painting from late Mughal Delhi

where a framed portrait of the emperor hangs over the central architectural feature in the

painting and over the principal character, Nawab Zulfiqar al-Din Haidar (fig. 20).19

Fig. 19. Nawab Zulfiqar al-Din Haidar at ease. By Shah Rukh Beg, c. 1850. San Diego Museum of Art,

1990.398.

Given that late Mughal paintings are as full of political symbolism as those of Jahangir and

Shah Jahan, this must be a deliberate patronal and artistic choice. Above the ornate frame of

the gilded mirror on the left is the artist’s and patron’s choice of replacement for the absent

Emperor: the coat-of-arms of the East India Company, two facing lions holding a shield with

the cross of St George, the symbol of British dominance in India, has supplanted the line of

Mughal emperors descended from Timur (fig. 21).

19

Now in San Diego, see Goswamy and Smith 2005, no. 118.

14

Fig. 21. Detail of fig. 1.

The objects in the room also show an apparent fascination with English taste. We note the

glass wall sconces, the hanging lamps and the candleholders on the mantelpiece, the bracket

clock on its avian corbel, and the blackamoors that support the corner sconces. The two

white figurines of dogs, perhaps Staffordshire ware, and the glass domes with vases and

flowers, were all popular Victorian mantelpiece ornaments. The large gilt wall mirror, the

pictures hanging on the walls and in the cavetto of the ceiling, all betray a fascination with

the trappings of a Victorian drawing room. Yet despite the Victorian wall decorations, there

is no hint of any furniture, for all this apparent Anglophilia is combined with the normal rugs

and bolsters for sitting comfortably in the floor in the Indian manner, complete with the

customary huqqas, pan boxes, spittoons, incense burners and daggers and swords. Retainers,

musicians and public women in attendance conform to the traditional appurtenances of

Mughal portraiture. It is difficult not to believe that this attitude of Anglophilia was assumed

on the prince’s part for political reasons, to assure his succession and to gain allies in the

British against the plots of Zinat Mahal to ensure the succession of her own son. Chairs and

tables are perhaps stored out of sight for wheeling into position when Metcalfe visited.

Yet we must remember that even in its last phase Mughal painting was never meant to be a

representation of reality. Although the physical presence of a fireplace and chimneypiece in

the ruins of the Zafar Mahal at Mehrauli suggests that the room as depicted by Ghulam ‘Ali

Khan was to some extent founded on fact, the appurtenances of a western drawing room

could very easily have been pictorial inventions added by the artist to serve his patron’s

political purpose. That there are three surviving versions of the accession portrait of Bahadur

Shah suggests that they were meant to be given away to gain influence in the right quarters.

Our painting perhaps was meant to be sent to Metcalfe or a similar British official as an

earnest of the prince’s good intentions, to demonstrate that his heart was in the right place.

Mirza Fakhruddin was in fact no way westernized and conformed to the highest cultural

standards of his illustrious dynasty. Like his father, he was a poet, writer, patron of the arts

and an intellectual. He was one of the most respected and talented poets of the period,

writing under the name Ramz. He is depicted in Farhatullah Beg’s Dehli ki akhri shama

presiding over the forty poets gathered in the courtyard of a great house for a night of

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poetry.20

Despite the contemporary political significance of the setting, the view of the

mosque domes outside the window is also an allusion to a different and more spiritual

significance of the setting for Fakhruddin and his father. The Zafar Mahal was built next to

the dargah of the thirteenth century Chishti Sufi Saint, Qutubuddin Bakhtiar Kaki, where the

annual Urs of the saint was one of the preeminent festivals of Delhi, along with the monsoon

festival Phool Walon ki Sair, or procession of the flower sellers from the tomb of the saint to

the nearby Yogamayaji Hindu temple.

COMPARISONS WITH GHULAM ‘ALI KHAN’S OTHER PAINTINGS

Mirza Fakhruddin and company is one of the finest interior scenes to survive from late

Mughal Delhi. The many different types of lamp, the portraits, the mantelpiece ornaments,

the bracket clock set at 10 o’clock in the morning, all done with consummate skill (note

especially the beautiful globes of the hanging lamps), mark this as one of the great Anglo-

Indian paintings. It immediately strikes an accord with two other of the artist’s interior

scenes done contemporaneously for the Nawab of Jhajjar (figs. 22-23).21

Fig. 22. Nawab ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan enjoying a musical party in the hot weather. By Ghulam ‘Ali Khan,

1849. British Library, Add.Or.4680.

20

Translated by Akhtar Qamber as The Last Musha’irah of Delhi (New Delhi, 1979). 21

Losty and Roy 2012, figs. 165 and 166.

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Fig. 23. Nawab ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan in durbar with the envoy of the Raja of Alwar, Capt. Alexander

Heatherly. By Ghulam ‘Ali Khan, 1852. British Library, Add.Or.4681.

Both the Jhajjar paintings, however, are relatively bare of interior fitments and are set in a

typically Indian audience chamber. Baluster columns frame the Nawab but their linking arch

is concealed beneath the hanging awnings so that the ceiling is not visible. Only in the later

of the two Jhajjar paintings of 1852 does the artist attempt a large gilt mirror in a perspective

view on the left as in Mirza Fakhruddin’s picture, but its top disappears beneath the frame of

the painting. In Mirza Fakhruddin’s picture for the first time Ghulam ‘Ali Khan attempts to

include the upper part of the room, perhaps even a ceiling, which is one of the most difficult

technical things for an Indian artist to attempt when their use of perspective was only to

indicate in a general way spatial relationships rather than to suggest an illusion of reality.

Above the heavy pediments of the doorways there is surely a gilded cavetto, marked by the

forwards tilt of the small portraits at the sides and the oeil-de-boeuf windows which normally

are pierced in sloping or mansard roofs.

Moving our attention downwards, one notes immediately how the floors in all three paintings

are covered with a spotless white sheet. All have their sides and front cast into shadow from

no possible light source within the painting, and exhibit similar uncertainty about where the

floor ends and the walls begin. Just as the Nawab of Jhajjar is framed by the baluster

columns of his durbar hall, so Mirza Fakhruddin is placed exactly between the pilasters

supporting the mantelpiece directly beneath the clock and the obscured portrait of (as we

have suggested) his father. Although slightly off-centre, his placement on the rectangular

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carpet viewed in western perspective is meant to lead the eye of the viewer straight to the

principal figure, a function also performed by the long mat underneath the spectacular

hookah. Both these devices are found in the 1852 Jhajjar painting. Most of the figures are

set firmly on the sheet or the carpet, as in the 1849 Jhajjar painting, but not as in the 1852 one

where the overly high viewpoint creates problems for the artist. An exception here is the

group of musicians, whose placement is rather awkward and who are depicted somewhat

smaller than they ought to be for this position in the painting, obviously so that they do not

obscure our view of the women behind them. The three main musicians although with

different heads are very similarly positioned to the three in the 1849 Jhajjar painting, except

that extraordinarily both tambura players appear to be left-handed and their instruments rest

on their right shoulders. Surely here a charba has been used the wrong way round? The

additional sarangi player has somewhat awkwardly been positioned too closely behind them.

All this suggests that some parts of the painting may be by assistants. A study of similar

musicians attributable to the studio of Ghulam ‘Ali Khan is in the Indian Museum, Calcutta,

and has this same left-handed peculiarity (fig. 24).22

Fig. 24. Musicians, studio of Ghulam ‘Ali Khan, 1830-50. Indian Museum, Calcutta.

The painting attempts to strike a balance between respect for the old traditions of the

Mughals and an acceptance of their new position in British India. It shows a moment of calm

equilibrium before the storm. The following year, 1853, brought the death of Sir Thomas

Metcalfe and that of the two other men who had negotiated the agreement of 1852 with Mirza

Fakhruddin, Sir Henry Miers Elliot, the foreign secretary in the government of India, and

James Thomason, Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces based at Agra. All three

were widely believed to have been poisoned at the instigation of the queen Zinat Mahal in

revenge for the passing over of her son. Mirza Fakhruddin himself survived only another

three years, officially dying of cholera in 1856 at the early age of forty. He is buried with his

ancestors near the beautiful mosque outside the window of the room in this painting. His son,

22

Naman P. Ahuja, The Body in Indian Art and Thought, Ludion, Europalia, Brussels, 2013, no. 416)

18

the impetuous Mirza Abu Bakht, joined some of the other Mughal princes in becoming

leaders of the insurrection in 1857, whereas Fakhruddin’s father-in-law Mirza Ilahe Baksh

continued to serve the British cause and became their leading spy and informant. After the

fall of Delhi, it was Ilahe Baksh who led Major William Hodson to the refuge of the three

Mughal princes who had been the leaders of the revolt. All three were shot in cold blood by

Hodson, among them Abu Bakht, the son of Mirza Fakhruddin pictured here.

THE EQUESTRIAN PORTRAIT OF MIRZA FAKHRUDDIN

Encased in a gilt frame over the mantelpiece in the painting of Mirza Fakhruddin in his

reception room at the Zafar Mahal is a processional scene with a young prince on horseback

with attendants. This is in fact a pictorial representation of our second painting (fig. 25).

Fig, 25. Mirza Fakhruddin in procession. Attributed to Ghulam ‘Ali Khan and assistants, Delhi, c. 1840.

Opaque pigments heightened with gold and silver on paper. 35 by 44.3 cm. Image courtesy Brendan Lynch and

Oliver Forge.

Again without any inscriptions, its position of honour in the room suggests that it depicts the

same prince, and in fact it is not difficult to determine that the young prince is indeed Mirza

Fakhruddin himself based on the five known portraits discussed above dated in 1838 and

1839 (figs. 10-11).

19

Fig. 26. Detail of fig. 25.

His small moustache here is perhaps slightly more pronounced than in the 1838 accession

portraits, allowing us to date this processional scene to around 1840. The large liquid eyes,

the pronounced eyebrows, large nose and long hair curling on the nape of his neck are the

same in both (see fig, 26). Indeed the artist has turned the prince’s face more towards the

viewer thereby disguising a little the size of his nose. His mournful gaze seems to prefigure

the approaching end of the dynasty. A loose red turban is upon his head and he wears a

delicately sprigged muslin jama of chikan work. His cummerbund is a shawl secured round

his waist with a knot and its ends hang loosely at his side. An ivory- or jade-handled dagger

is thrust through his cummerbund and secured by a sash with a tassel. A cord slung round his

neck reaching down to his waist is a most unusual type of fashion accoutrement and is a little

mysterious. It looks as if it might be connected to the reins of his horse but its purpose is

obscure. This area of the painting has suffered severe flaking. The prince is riding a

beautifully caparisoned stallion with an elegantly plaited mane and a Kashmir shawl knotted

into its bridle.

20

The scene is set on the banks of the River Jumna. In the distance across the river may be

seen a small shrine and beyond a tiny representation of the Qutb Minar, some ten miles

distant from the river. The prince is preceded by a crowd of attendants on foot carrying

swords, wrapped up arms and lances, artistically crossing each other as in some of the pages

of soldiers from the Fraser album.23

Behind him are a chowrie bearer and a parasol bearer,

carrying their insignia of royalty, as well as another party of retainers, this time mounted and

carrying swords and pennants.

The painting is in the style of Ghulam ‘Ali Khan, and he would seem to have been

responsible for the principle figures. These include the prince himself as well as his

immediate attendants behind him holding chowrie and parasol and those in the foreground

(fig. 27).

Fig. 27. Detail of fig. 25. Fig. 28. A Mewati. Attributed to Ghulam ‘Ali Khan, 1825. From

James Skinner’s Tasrih al-Aqvan. British Library, Add.27255,

f.70v.

These figures recall the studies of castes and tradesmen in James Skinner’s manuscript Tasrih

al-Akvan in the British Library which was produced by Ghulam ‘Ali Khan and assistants in

23

Archer, M., and Falk, T., India Revealed: the Art and Adventures of James and William Fraser 1801-35,

Cassell, London, 1989, nos. 61-62.

21

1825 (for instance fig. 28).24

Ghulam ‘Ali Khan does seem to have had some assistance with

the rest of the attendants on foot in front and the mounted attendants behind. There is a

certain sameness about the retainers that the master would have varied, for instance all the

bearded ones have exactly the same kind of fluffy beard and small upturned moustache (fig.

29).

Fig. 29. Detail of fig. 25.

Ghulam ‘Ali Khan was always careful to individualize even the minor figures in his group

portraits as in the durbar of Colonel James Skinner in the National Army Museum and the

two durbars of the Nawab of Jhajjar in the British Library (figs. 22-23).25

Fig. 30. Troopers of Skinner’s Horse. Attributed to Ghulam ‘Ali Khan, c. 1827. British Library, Add.Or.1246.

24

Losty and Roy 2012, pp. 225-26. 25

Dalrymple and Sharma 2012, nos. 58, 77-78.

22

Some of the studies of named troopers and orderlies in the Skinner Album also in the British

Library can reliably be attributed to the master (fig. 30), since they are studies for his great

painting of Colonel Skinner’s durbar done in 1827, and they have an individualised character

and an alertness that is not so obvious in this processional scene.26

This equestrian processional scene adds a new type of composition to Ghulam ‘Ali Khan’s

known work. Unlike nearly all his other paintings with landscape elements, the horizon here

is very low. It is also found in some of the studies of castes and occupations in Skinner’s

Tasrih al-Akvan done in 1825, lending to the tall and elegant form of the Mewati warrior for

instance (fig. 28) a majestic physical presence. Ghulam ‘Ali Khan in this processional scene

with Mirza Fakhruddin had some difficulties with reconciling this low viewpoint with his

traditional overhead one. Whereas the group of horsemen behind the prince are recognizably

in a kind of recession, those attendants on foot in front are not so happily placed and those

further back seem to have left the ground. This low viewpoint is not something he tried again

in his work. The prince’s horse too is rather oddly portrayed, for both its front and hind left

legs are off the ground simultaneously, which is not a physical possibility for any quadruped.

For all these reasons the hands of assistants in the painting are to be suspected.

Fig. 31. Nawab ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan of Jhajjar killing a tiger. By Ghulam ‘Ali Khan with assistants, c. 1855.

Opaque pigments with gold. V & A Museum, London, 03531(IS).

26

Losty and Roy 2012, pp. 222-24.

23

For his last major landscape painting and indeed his last known painting showing again his

patron Nawab ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan of Jhajjar in a tiger hunt in the V &A Museum (fig. 31),

he reverted to a more overhead viewpoint, avoiding the problems caused by a low horizon.27

The Nawab seems older than in his earlier portraits of 1849 and 1852 and a date of around

1855 seems safe, just before the catastrophe in 1857 in which he lost his life. Strangely the

elephants owe more to J. Williamson and S. Howitt’s Oriental Field Sports published in 1807

than they do to traditional Mughal representations of those noble beasts. Similarly the

nervous and highly strung horses seem of a different type to the earlier one ridden by Mirza

Fakhruddin and their prancing gait seems to be based on English sporting prints. Here again

perhaps the elderly artist called on his assistants.

27

M. Archer, Company Paintings: Indian Paintings of the British Period, Victoria and Albert Museum,

London, 1992, no. 136. Archer strangely dates the painting to c. 1820 before the Nawab’s birth.