A lady seated on a terrace holding a narcissus, with an attendant
Mughal, attributed to Muhammad Reza-i-Hindi, circa 1760-63
gouache and gold on paper, gold and coloured inner borders and margin rules, plain outer border, verso eight lines of Persian and Arabic texts written in naskhi script, excised from different manuscripts, 15th-16th Century, red and blue paper borders
painting 185 x 135 mm.; with borders 303 x 252 mm.
Footnotes:
Provenance
Perhaps from an album produced for Sir Charles Forbes, 1st Baronet (1774-1849), circa 1790.
Colonel Sir John Forbes, DSO, DL, Bt.
Perhaps Sotheby's, 10th December 1962.

See the following lot in this sale (149) for a painting from the Forbes collection.

Muhammad Reza-i-Hindi (perhaps so called because he went, or was taken, to Persia, and so was working outside India), was active within the provincial Mughal courts in the mid-18th Century, and was certainly active in around 1760, when he produced several paintings, signed and unsigned, which were part of an album produced for Sir Charles Forbes, 1st Baronet (1774-1849). This album, offered by Colonel Sir John Forbes, DSO, DL, Bt. was sold at Sotheby's in 1962 and dispersed). Several of these paintings have appeared and have been published: see for example, E. Binney, Indian Miniature Painting from the Collection of Edwin Binney 3rd, Portland 1973, p. 109, no. 86 (signed and dated AH 1175/AD 1761); Sotheby's, Fine Oriental Miniatures, Manuscripts, Qajar Paintings and Lacquer, 4th May 1977, lot 347; Simon Ray, Indian and Islamic Works of Art, April 2006, pp. 128-129, no. 60 (signed and dated AH 1175/AD 1761); Bonhams New York, Arts of India, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayas Online, 17th-24th September 2021, lot 1232.

See also T. Falk & M. Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, London 1981, no. 211; and the David Collection, Copenhagen (12/2002).

The calligraphy on the reverse of the above lot is of a similar type to the Bonhams New York example cited above, and also has almost identical maroon, gold and blue paper borders. The calligraphy here consists of sections excised from at least two different manuscripts, one from a 15th century Persian manuscript of Kalilah va Dimnah, and the rest in Arabic, 15-16th century, comprising sections of text said to be from a letter of Imam 'Ali to his son Hasan.
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