A YOUNG LADY AND HER GOVERNESS
INDIA, PROVINCIAL MUGHAL, LATE 18TH CENTURY
Estimate: £4,000 - £6,000
Auction: 11 June 2025 from 10:00 BST
Description
gouache on paper heightened with gold, a young woman stands with her governess, an older grey-haired doyenne who is leading her through a palace doorway to the palace zenana, the maiden wrapped in a red cloak holding a cauri , her protector leaning on a staff, the coral-coloured arch with typical Mughal designs, mounted, glazed and framed
Dimensions
36cm x 23.7cm
Provenance
Formerly, the collection of Dr. Claus Virch, collected in the early 1970s.
Claus Virch (1927-2012) was an esteemed scholar and connoisseur of European paintings. He was a member of the curatorial staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from 1957 to 1970 as a specialist in the Department of Old Master Paintings and Drawings. Born in Germany, Virch completed a dissertation on the drawings of Ernst Barlach in 1952 at the University of Kiel. After the war, he immigrated to California, but soon moved to New York where a chance meeting with Henry Francis Taylor, then Director of the Metropolitan Museum, led to his working there.
In 1970, after overseeing the new installation of paintings in conjunction with the institution’s Centennial celebration, Virch left the museum to create an art fund with Christian Humann to invest in art from world cultures. Humann’s active collecting, especially of Asian art, coincided with Virch’s wide-ranging tastes. Dr. Pratapaditya Pal met Virch in 1973 when he accompanied Virch and Humann on a visit to acquire works of art from Alice Heeramaneck after Nasli Heeramaneck’s death. Some of that purchase went to form Christian Humann’s famous Pan-Asian Collection, Claus Virch’s large collection of Indian paintings was very likely acquired around that time, with significant purchases from the Heeramanecks.
Footnote
This painting, whilst minimalist in its composition, draws our focus on the two figures and their expression. The old lady is seen with her head slightly tilted, comforting and advising her young ward with her arm around her shoulders. The young lady looks a little forlorn and pensive, with her finger lifted towards her mouth. There is a degree of modesty, almost as if they are sharing deep secret between them.
During the Mughal Empire, the theme of a young lady with an old lady is a popular one. For a similar but earlier painting of a maiden wrapped in a cloak by Mohammad Panah, an artist working in the court of Muhammad Shah (r. 1714-1748), see E. Hannam, Eastern Encounters, Four Centuries of Paintings and Manuscripts from the Indian Subcontinent, London, 2018, no. 42.