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Country of Origin: Mughal
India
JBOC Comments: This is in the
style of Mansur. It is similar but not a copy of
the Minto Album Zebra signed by Mansur wich is
now in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London,
UK. I do not think this is by Mansur however. In
the Tuzuk-i Jahangiri it is recorded that
Jahangir ordered his artists to paint this
animal. Three paintings are known, this, the
V&A painting and the one in the Boston Museum
of Fine Arts so since the reference to painters
was plural it is unlikely that Mansur painted all
three. I tend to doubt Ananda Coomaraswamy's
attribution of the Boston MFA painting as well. A
few key differences between this and the V&A
paintings are in the markings. On the neck note
the Y stripes and the bar stripes. This one goes
|Y||Y while the V&A goes YY|. so while both
have the circle on the rump the markings are very
different so I see it as two different artists.
For a discussion of the Minto Album zebra see Okada,
Amina. Indian Miniatures of the Mughal Court
page 222.
Auction Catalogue Description:
Sale Title Indian and Southeast Asian Art
Including 20th Century
Indian Paintings
Location New York, Rockefeller Plaza Sale Date
Mar 25, 2004
Lot Number 193 Sale Number 1355
Creator INDIA, MUGHAL, CIRCA 1620
Lot Title A Miniature Painting of a Zebra
Estimate 90,000 - 120,000 U.S. dollars
Pre-lot Text INDIAN PAINTINGS
Property of a Gentleman
Lot Description A Miniature Painting of a Zebra
India, Mughal, circa 1620
Painted within a green landscape with flowering
plants with details of the eyes and hide very
finely rendered
5 7/16 x 7¾ in. (13.8 x 19.7 cm.)
Provenance Sotheby's New York, 22 March 1989, lot
65.
Sotheby's New York, 20 March 1997, lot 9.
Literature Exhibition Catalogue, Islamic Art of
India, London, Spink & Son, Ltd., 1980, cat.
no. 70.
P. Pal, Court Paintings Art of India 16th-19th
Centuries, New York, 1983, p. 157, ill. no. M40.
Exhibited London, Spink & Son, Ltd., Islamic
Art of India, cat. no. 70, April-May 1980.
Lot Notes The Mughal emperor Jahangir (r.1605-27)
was extremely fond of exotic flora and animals
and commissioned many detailed and naturalistic
renderings of these subjects. Of the zebra,
Jahangir described in his memoirs, the
Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, "At this time I saw a
wild ass (gur-khar), exceedingly strange in
appearance, exactly like a tiger. From the tip of
the nose to the end of the tail, and from the
point of the ear to the top of the hoof, black
markings, large and small, suitable to their
position were seen on it. Round the eyes there
was an exceedingly fine black line. One might say
that the painter of fate, with a strange brush,
had left it on the page of the world. As it was
strange, some people imagined that it had been
colored... after minute inquiry into the truth,
it became known that the Lord of the World was
the creator thereof. As it was a rarity, it was
included among the royal gifts sent to my brother
Shah'Abbas,"
Cf. R. Skelton, The Indian Heritage Court Life
and Arts Under Mughal Rule, 1982, p. 39. Only two
other Mughal illustrations of zebras are known.
One image currently in the Victoria and Albert
Museum is from the Minto album painted by Ustad
Mansur, the acknowledged master of animal and
flora studies within Jahangir's court, who was
bestowed the title of Nadir al-'Asr. According to
P. Pal, Court Paintings of India, 1983, p. 53,
the inscription on the Victoria and Albert Museum
work indicates that it was painted in 1621 when
the zebra was brought to the Mughal court from
Goa. The second painting in the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston, was attributed to Mansur by Ananda
Coomaraswamy, in his Catalogue of the Indian
Collections in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
part VI, pl. XLII. The above painting, if not
drawn by Mansur himself, was likely executed by
an artist under his supervision at Jahangir's
court.
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