Elephants frolicking in a mountain lake, India, Mughal, circa 1630-40

Ex-collection Hagop Kevorkian (1872-1962)

Sotheby's London, 3 April 1978, lot 85

inscriptions

On the reverse: kuh-i kari bone, 'mountain of the elephant abode'

The Mughal emperors frequently directed the artists of their atelier to make naturalistic portraits of individual elephants, often having the animals shown outfitted in elaborate regalia, but sometimes observed in more mundane moments with their handlers. Less common are images of groups of elephants in the wild unfettered by the chains and trappings of captivity and unthreatened by human capture. A group of eight elephants in the wild is depicted on a painting in an album now in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, (inv. no.Suppl.Pers. 1572, 11r), while a small portrait of an elephant in the wild was formerly in the collection of Maurice and Edmond de Rothschild and was sold in these rooms, 24 April 2024, lot 108. No fewer than seventeen elephants frolicking in and around a mountainside lake are depicted in the present painting, quite unprecedented in early seventeenth-century Mughal painting.

The silver water, the trees, and the elephant tusks have been repainted at some point during the painting's history prior to 1978, when it was illustrated in the Sotheby’s catalogue in its altered state. Nevertheless, the fine brushwork and detailed rendition of the elephants have lost none of their original charm and visual appeal.