A PAGE FROM A POLIER ALBUM, NORTHERN INDIA, FIRST HALF 17TH CENTURY AND LUCKNOW, CIRCA 1775 in opaque colours and gold on paper, comprising a Mughal portrait of a standing courtier wearing diaphanous robes, holding a hawk in one hand and its prey in the other, within a mount decorated with elaborate floral sprays in tones of blue within narrower bands of silver and gilt foliate motifs on a blue ground with ink ruled borders, inscribed with the number '4' to the lower left of the central image, the reverse with a similar border enclosing a calligraphic exercise in refined shikasta script within a cusped border in gold on pale blue paper, the mount with exuberant floral sprays in yellow, red and black within bands of gold foliate motifs reserved on a blue ground edged with ruled borders in black ink, miniature 11.8 x 5.8cm., folio 39.5 x 28.8cm. PROVENANCE:Private English collection, acquired London in the 1980s.Willam Beckford, after 1802.Colonel Antoine Polier, (d.1795).Colonel Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier de Bottens (1741-1795), spent thirty years in Indian before his return in 1788. A Swiss engineer, architect and entrepreneur, in his time in India he worked both for the British and Indian rulers. His was empathetic to both cultures and whilst engaging in the promotion of the interests of the East India Company at the court of Lucknow, he began the production of a series of albums, muraqqa, very much in a Mughal tradition. Though the majority of the albums are now in the museums of Berlin, after the sale of Beckford, some were dispersed. The format of each page is of a painting with a page of calligraphy recto, both enclosed within borders typically with a recognisably exuberant decoration. Many of the paintings were commissioned by Polier, often after Mughal originals, from the court artists of Lucknow, notably Mihr Chand with whom Polier had a particularly close working relationship. Occasionally, as with this page, Polier also managed to obtain works from the Mughal workshops from an earlier period. The Miniature The reminiscence of the figure to portraits of the Emperor Jahangir may come to mind but other figures from the Mughal court also bear a strong similarity. A depiction of Mirza Muzaffar, circa 1610-20, a grandson of Shah Ismail of Persia and governor of Qandahar, has a similar looking figure with diaphanous dress and holding a falcon. It is housed in an album of Mughal portraits in the Royal Collection, RCIN 1005038.s. Another portrait, this time of Khan ‘Alam, Jahangir’s falconer and his ambassador to Iran, takes a similar stance though in different dress, but with the sparrow hawk and a smaller bird, the hawk’s prey, in his left hand (Harvard Art Museums, object number 1999.293). These various similarities prevent, at this point, a firm identification of the subject. The use of the purplish ground colour is less common on portraits of this period as is the inclusion of floral motifs in gold dispersed around the background. Parallels do exits though such as around the figure of Inayat Khan, circa 1610, formerly in the collection of Tom Maschler and sold at Christie’s, New York, 19th June 2019, lot 325. The Calligraphy The distinctive form of shikasta can be attributed to Mir Muhammad Husayn ‘Ata Khan, who specifically provided examples of calligraphy for Polier’s albums (Kwiatkowski 2025, p.287). ‘Ata Khan was the son of Muhammad Baqir, who was a tughra-navis, or writer of the calligraphic signatures of rulers. ‘Ata Khan had mastery of a number of different forms of script including both Persian and Indian forms of shikasta. There is some suggestion that ‘Ata Khan’s grandfather had established a role in dealing with the British and this may have paved the way for ‘Ata Khan’s familiarity with English and British customs leading to his appointment in the court of Shuja’ al-Dawla. This, in turn, is thought to have led to his introduction to Polier after the latter was sent to Awadh by Warren Hastings in 1773. Within a brief period, a mutual trust seems to have been built and ‘Ata Khan quickly came to work for Polier, though by 1775 this employment came to an end following court intrigues. It is to this period that the calligraphic exercise on this page is most likely to date from. The Iconography As Kwiatkowski indicates (ibid., p.298), although there may have been no didactic purpose in the production of the albums of Polier, there were clearly allusions of which a contemporary audience would have been aware. One of those, relevant to this page, is that of viziership, service and loyalty to a ruler with the depiction of a falcon. An established euphemism for a vizier was that of ‘royal falcon’ (shah-baz). A number of references to this occur in texts within Polier’s album including a legend taken from the Anvar-I Suhayli, in which a royal falcon meets its death at the hands of the King despite its attempts to protect him. This was probably copied by ‘Ata Khan and between him and Polier there is the suggestion that they shared a sense of service of being in a class of court attendants whose sage advice was not always valued by their rulers. In this context, it is more encouraging to see the identity of the subject as the Emperor. It is interesting that both British and Indian ministers and officials might have seen a common fate shared between them. Border Although the border immediately suggests an origin from a Polier Album, it is worth noting that across the albums ‘none of the marginal designs are perfectly identical to one another’ (Imbert 2025, 3.1.2, ill.9.7). However, closely related groups can be formed and amongst these, those employing a form of bouquet, can be found in at least five albums. Though well used in the albums, this bouquet motif may not have its origins in Mughal tradition but might, as is suggested elsewhere, have be derived from designs taken from European ceramics. Polier was himself energetically engaged in the trade of European goods.
