A folio from a Polier Album: Female ascetics praying at night, India, Provincial Mughal, Lucknow, circa 1760-80

From an album made for Colonel Antoine Polier (1741-95), Lucknow, late 18th century

Galerie Jean Soustiel, Paris, 1983

Private collection, Germany; acquired from the above in 1986

Miniatures Orientales de L'Inde 3, Galerie Jean Soustiel, Paris, 19 May - 23 July 1983

M. David, J. Soustiel, Miniatures Orientales de L'Inde 3, exhibition catalogue, Galerie Jean Soustiel, Paris, 1983, p.32f, no.24

This folio belongs to an album assembled by Colonel Antoine Polier, one of the greatest of early European collectors of Indian miniatures. Antoine Louis Henri Polier was born in Lausanne in Switzerland in 1741 and began his career as a surveyor in the East India Company in 1758. By 1762 he had become Chief Engineer of the Bengal Army in Calcutta and Chief Architect for the Kingdom of Awadh, working within the court of Nawab Shuja al-Daula.

During his time in India, Polier collected a large number of Persian and Sanskrit manuscripts and Indian miniatures. Polier commissioned works himself as well as acquiring earlier works from others. He assembled at least twelve albums of paintings and calligraphy, most of which were later acquired by William Beckford. Several folios with Beckford are now in the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin and in The British Museum in London. For further discussion of Polier and his albums, see M. Roy, ‘Origins of the late Mughal painting tradition in Awadh’ in S. Markel and T.B. Gude, India's Fabled City, The Art of Courtly Lucknow, Los Angeles, 2011, pp.176-181.

This folio has the distinctive broad floral margins associated with pages from the Polier albums. The subjects of these albums include portraits of Mughal emperors, musicians, courtesans, holy men, architecture, and subjects of Hindu mythology, all painted in a distinctive style associated with late eighteenth-century painting in Lucknow. Polier established a studio where he employed Mihr Chand as the chief artist. Mihr Chand also worked on the layout and decoration of these albums. The reverse of the paintings often have calligraphic panels framed by similar floral margins. Calligraphers whose names appear on some of these panels include Hafiz Nurullah, Muhammad 'Ali, and Muhammad Baqir.

Another Polier Album folio bearing an inscription in French in a similar hand, '22. Femme Indienne adoratrice du feu' sold in these rooms, 25 April 2019, lot 91. The present lot was possibly the folio preceding that painting in the same album. Folios bearing French inscriptions are thought to belong to Polier’s earlier albums. For other folios sold at auction, see Sotheby’s, London, 12 December 1966, lot 12 (which has a French inscription in the same hand as the present example); 24 April 1979, lot 43; 6 October 2010, lots 80 and 81; 15 June, 2010, lot 5; 8 October 2014, lots 270-2; 25 October 2017, lot 78; Sotheby’s, New York, 21 March 2012, lot 224; Christie’s, London, 12 October 2004, lot 176; 25 May 2017, lot 98 (inscribed in French in the same hand as the present work ); Christie’s, New York, 16 September 2008, lots 472, 473 and 475 (all inscribed in French in the same hand as the present work); Christie’s London, 12 June 2018, lots 21-24; and more recently, 27 October 2013, lots 112 and 113.