Painting, Nawab Aliverdi Khan with nephews and grandson on terrace, opaque watercolour and gold on paper, Murshidabad, ca. 1750-1755

Painting, opaque watercolour and gold on paper, Nawab Alivardi Khan seated on a terrace in conversation with his nephews Nawaziah Muhammad Khan (Shahamat Jang) and Sa'id Ahmad Khan (Saulat Jang) and his grandson Siraj ud-daula.

Nawab Alivardi Khan seated on a terrace in conversation with his nephews Nawaziah Muhammad Khan (Shahamat Jang) and Sa'id Ahmad Khan (Saulat Jang) and his grandson Siraj ud-daula.

Historical significance: The four persons depicted in the painting were all historical figures, particularly Alivardi Khan and Siraj ud-daula.

Transferred from the Department of Engraving, Illustration & Design.

RP 51/2237

The painting is in the style of the Mughal provincial court painting, in particular Murshidabad school. The city of Murshidabad assumed a new importance and a new name early in the eightenth century, when Murshid Quli Khan was appointed Mughal governor of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, and made Murshidabad the administrative capital of the province in sucession to Dacca. A most able administrator in that time of disintegrating central government, he was also a devout Muslim whose austere and frugal disposition made him an unpromising patron of the arts. Robert Skelton has, however, demonstrated that under this nawab and by about 1720 Murshidabad may already have attracted some of the court painters displaced by the decline of Mughal patronage at Delhi, and become the centre of a new school of provincial Mughal painting which was to achieve its definitive state under Nawab Alivardi Khan some thirty years later. Robert Skelton notes the influence of late Aurangzeb period court paintings on the formal style and sombre colour scheme of early Murshidabad work, anticipating the 'grey precision' which characterises Murshidabad painting of the mid-eighteenth century.

D.1201-1903