A PORTRAIT OF AN INDIAN WET NURSE, POSSIBLY DAI ANGAH
Mughal Provincial School, Northern India, 18th century

Opaque pigments heightened with gold on paper, the vertical composition depicting a chubby Indian maiden, most probably a wet nurse, wearing a long white muslin dress over tight pajama trousers and red slippers, her head and shoulders covered with a bright orange shawl, mounted on an improvised buff paper frame, the recto with several annotations and inscriptions including six lines of black ink Devanagari script, one line mentioning Shah Jahan's eldest and favourite son, Dara Shikoh; numerals in a variety of inks; an inscription in Urdu in black ink; and the purple stamp of the renowned Indian art collector, Kumar Sangram Singh of Nawalgarh with the inventory number AI - 24, 23cm x 15.4cm.

The attire, body size, and presentation of this Indian maiden may suggest she is a wet nurse working at the Mughal court. The Devanagari inscription on the recto mentioning Dara Shikoh leads to the speculation she could be Zeb-un-Nisa, better known as Dai Angah, the wet nurse of the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan. Her son Muhammad Rashid Khan was one of the best archers in the Mughal Empire, but he died fighting in the service of Shah Jahan's eldest son Dara Shikoh.