AN ILLUSTRATED FOLIO FROM THE FIRST BABURNAMA


BY KANHA AND KHEM, MUGHAL INDIA, CIRCA 1589Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; verso text area with nine lines of nasta'liq in black ink within a gold border, and nasta'liq inscription in red ink, translated, "Drawn by Kanha, colored by Khem son of Narayan"; and numbered "112". Image: 2 3/8 x 3 in. (6 x 7.6 cm);Text area: 7 x 3 in. (17.7 x 7.6 cm);Folio: 10 3/8 x 6 1/8 in. (26.3 x 15.5 cm)
|Two pairs of parrots, flaunting brilliant red and green feathers, perch in a tree's gnarled branches. One pair face one another on lower branches, while the others preen and look out over a churning stream below. The folio comes from a collection of memoirs written by Babur, the progenitor of an imperial dynasty that would govern the Indian subcontinent for centuries. Babur meticulously recorded not only his own life events but also the fascinating and new natural world he found when he first arrived in India in 1526. Babur's memoirs, written in his ancestral Turki, were faithfully translated into Persian and illustrated by the finest court painters at the request of his grandson, Akbar. This painting is from the first of the four main Baburnama manuscripts, and as such the painting has a more animated and unreserved style than those in later texts. Twenty other pages from this initial manuscript are held in the Victoria & Albert Museum (Stronge, Painting for the Mughal Emperor, London, 2002, pp.86-91). Of these illustrated folios in the Baburnama depicting India's flora and fauna, Smart writes: "The charm and detachment of the paintings of the animals, birds, and plants that Babur described upon his arrival in Hindustan offer the viewer a refreshing change from the complexities and emotions of the narrative paintings. While the scenes of activity make direct statements about Babur's life, the flora and fauna tell much about his thoughts, interests, and powers of observation. The text is a long list of tropical species native to the subcontinent and unknown in Central Asia, with descriptions of their unusual characteristics. Babur was fascinated by natural history, and wrote in considerable detail about the more interesting varieties of Indian wild life. Akbar's artists illustrated this section of the Baburnama with individual paintings of most of the species described by Babur, aptly realistic, and displaying an ability to observe and record, comparable to the observations in Babur's writings. Babur would have been delighted with the illustrations." (Smart, Paintings from the Barburnama, Ph. D. thesis, S.O.A.S., University of London, 1977, pp.266-7). Published J.P. Losty, Indian and Persian Painting 1590-1840, Oliver Forge and Brendan Lynch Ltd, New York, 2014, pp.2-3. Provenance Manuscript dispersed in 1913 Hagop Kevorkian, New York Sotheby's, London, 7 December 1970, lot 96 Sotheby's, London, 27 April 1981, lot 65 Colnaghi Ltd, London, 1981-3 Private Virginia Collection