Mubarak-ud-Daula, Nawab of Murshidabad (1770-93), seated in durbar with Sir John Hadley D'Oyly, British Resident from 1780 to 1785 Murshidabad, circa 1795-1805 gouache on paper 350 x 530 mm. Footnotes: Provenance General Sir George Nugent, 1st Bt. (1757-1849), Commander-in-Chief, India, 1811-13, & Maria, Lady Nugent. Thence by descent via the Nugents to the current owners. For a very similar painting of the same subject in the Victoria and Albert Museum, see M. Archer, Company Paintings: Indian Paintings of the British Period, London 1992, pp. 78-80, no. 42(i), illus. She comments that the group of nine paintings of festivals and durbars in the V&A were probably based on originals by the British artist George Farington (1752-88), who was active in Murshidabad for a few years before his death there. There is also a comparable group now in the British Library (Add. Or. 3220-36) collected by Lt. Col. James Chicheley Hyde, who served in Bengal from 1806 to 1837. Archer notes that the artist(s) of such works were probably selling their work in both Murshidabad and in Calcutta, which corresponds with Lady Nugent's accounts of acquiring paintings. Our painting differs from the V&A work in the relative paleness of its palette, and there are minor differences in the background, though the essentials (figures on elephants, the buildings to left and right) are present in both. The same too tall figures appear as well, in the foreground, to the left and right of the front canopy poles. These figures were distinguishing characteristics in a story recounted by Archer (op. cit., p. 80): George Farington was commissioned by D'Oyly to paint him in durbar with the Nawab, and a smaller version was also made for a subsequent Resident, Robert Pott. D'Oyly's painting was sent back to London after Farington's death, but D'Oyly (then having run out of money) denied commissioning it. However, three artists (including Thomas Daniell) confirmed that this was indeed the case, and made reference to the too tall figures in the Pott version. The feature seems therefore to have made its way into the versions made by Murshidabad artists. Sir John Hadley D'Oyly had arrived in Bengal with the Company in 1770, aged sixteen, and had become a great friend of Warren Hastings, being promoted to the post of Persian Translator to the Board of Governors, and eventually to Resident at Murshidabad. William Hickey's frank memoirs commented that the post was 'considered as the most lucrative office in the Company's service, the whole stipend or salary allocated by Government to the Nawab passing through such Resident's hands, in which channel a considerable portion of it always stuck to his fingers'. For a portrait of him by John Thomas Seton, circa 1784, and discussion of his career, see M. Archer, India and British Portraiture, 1770-1825, London 1979, pp. 116-117, and no. 74. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com