Lot 126
BY A MASTER COMPANY SCHOOL ARTIST: A COURTESAN RECLINING ON A BOLSTER
INDIA, DELHI, CIRCA 1820
Auction: 09 December 2026 from 14:00 GMT
Description
watercolour on fine quality European paper laid down on card, a young woman, almost certainly a high-ranking courtesan or tawaif, reclines against a red floral bolster, she wears a diaphanous white choli, multiple strands of pearls and gold jewellery, with long black hair falling over one shoulder, black margin lines
Dimensions
24cm x 17.9cm
Provenance
Bashir Wali Mohamed (1939–2026), from whom acquired by the present owner.
Footnote
Her direct gaze and relaxed pose are rendered with exceptional delicacy and naturalism.
The same sitter appears in a closely related portrait in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (acc. no. 7.1707; see Linda York Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, London, 1995, p. 783). In that version she adopts a near-identical reclining pose and frontal gaze, but is set within a more elaborate architectural interior of marble columns and a richly patterned red carpet. The facial features, jewellery, and direct engagement with the viewer are so similar that the two works almost certainly depict the same woman, or were produced in the same atelier from the same model. The present painting’s spare background places greater emphasis on the figure itself, while the Chester Beatty example situates her more firmly within a palatial setting.
Such intimate, frontal depictions of courtesans belong to the same refined late-Mughal/ early Company School tradition that produced the celebrated nautch-girl portraits of the Fraser Album (c. 1815–20). Commissioned in Delhi by William and James Baillie Fraser, that album includes some of the finest surviving images of named dancers and courtesans - most famously Malaguire in her nautch dress (attributed to Lalji, 1815) - painted by artists of the circle of Ghulam Ali Khan (see Mildred Archer and Toby Falk, India Revealed: The Art and Adventures of James and William Fraser 1801–1835, London, 1989; and William Dalrymple and Yuthika Sharma, eds., Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi, 1707–1857, New York, 2012). Several of those Fraser Album pages were recently sold from the collection of Prince and Princess Sadruddin Aga Khan at Christie’s, London, 28 October 2025.
Related courtesan and nautch scenes are held in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (e.g. IS.9-1955 and 03525 (IS); see Mildred Archer, Company Paintings: Indian Paintings of the British Period, London, 1992), the British Library, the San Diego Museum of Art, and the Harvard Art Museums. The present work shares their technical precision, psychological presence, and aristocratic costume, reflecting the last flowering of this sophisticated portrait tradition in northern India. For further portraits of courtesans from the Fraser album see Sotheby's, New York, Fine Oriental Miniatures, Manuscripts and Islamic Works of Art including the Fraser Album, 9 December 1980, lots 162-166, and for a group of courtesans, see R. Crill and K. Jariwala (eds.), The Indian portrait 1560-1860, London, 2010, no. 56.