Creation Date: ca. 1775 Creation Place/Subject: India State-Province: Uttar Pradesh Court: Mughal School: Late Mughal Media & Support: Opaque watercolor and gold on paper Display Dimensions: 9 23/32 in. x 5 9/32 in. (24.7 cm x 13.4 cm) Credit Line: Edwin Binney 3rd Collection Accession Number: 1990.413 Collection: <a href="http://www.sdmart.org/art/our-collection/asian-art" rel="nofollow">The San Diego Museum of Art</a>

Label Copy: Later Mughals Installation

August 2003

Portraiture remained in demand among sub-Imperial patrons, but was generally more direct and less emblematic. This portrait is a depiction of the powerful Nawab of Avadh, Shuja ud-daulah (ruled 1754-1775), one hand on a dagger, the other on a sword. He is the ruler to whom the Mughal heir Shah Alam turned for refuge during the clash of the Marathas and the Afghans in Delhi. During the Nawabs twenty-year reign, he attracted painters and men of letters to his court, including western painters.

Westernization of style is evident in the frontal view of his face (although the body is shown in three-quarters view), the naturalistic shading in the folds of his garment, and the very deliberate, if clumsy, recession in the geometries of the carpet. There is a loss of precision in technique and an of interest in rendering visual impressions rather than complete, minute details, seen for example, in the pattern in the Nawabs slippers.

August 2008

Emerging Elites

This wealthy and powerful Nawab, lord or governor in the Urdu language, was from 1753 until 1775 a de facto independent ruler of the region known then as Awadh, a large territory in northern India essentially spanning the modern state of Uttar Pradesh. Both a patron of the arts and an able administrator, Shuja-ud-Daula maintained a vital painting atelier at his court and managed delicate political relations with the Muslim Afghans to the north, the Hindu Marathas to the west, and the British, who had gained control of Bengal to the east. Recognizing that portrait painting was a mark of prestige among Europeans, Shuja-ud-Daula invited the English academic portraitist Tilly Kettle (173586) to come to his court at Faizabad to produce oil paintings of him and his family. Indian artists in the Nawabs employ, who had been working in the imperial Mughal style, were intrigued by Kettles work and made copies on paper of his oil paintings, of which this is one example.