A HUNTING SCENE
PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE SCOTTISH ESTATE
Provincial Mughal school, possibly Lucknow, Awadh (Oudh) or Delhi, Northern India, late 18th century

Opaque pigments and white wash heightened with gold on paper, the vertical composition depicting a crowded hunting scene, in the middle ground a young beardless prince on elephant's back holding a long rifle and checking the pray of a tamed cheetah, two different groups of hunting attendants loaded with game depicted behind the cheetah and the prince, in the foreground another group of hunting attendants shown loading a tiger on their elephant's back, one of the men lying unconscious on the ground and bleeding, emerging in the upper right corner behind the puff of dark smoke produced by the shot of the rifle the distinctive contours of Indian pavilions and buildings, pasted onto a 20th-century cardboard album page with concentric polychrome-painted floral borders, the reverse with a modern Indian study of the typical Persian topos known as gol-o-bolbol (rose and nightingale), a composition with roses and birds, set within polychrome rules and gilt floral borders, the painting 26.5cm x 17.2cm, the album page 40.5cm x 28cm.