* Jeunes femmes jouant avec des feux artifices

Ladies Playing with Fireworks, opaque pigments, India, Lucknow, late 18th - early 19th century Gouache enhanced with gold on strong cardboard mounted as an album page with a gilded floral scrolling border. On the spine, a Persian quatrain calligraphed in nasta'liq script: royal eulogy copied by the modest servant, Hafiz Mohammed Borhan al-Din. Condition: damp Miniature size: 19 x 12.5 cm. Page : 45 x 31 cm. Provenance: Former British collection, acquired in the 1980s. This lot is sold as a temporary import. Oeuvre comparable / Similar work : Sotheby's, London, October 8, 2014, no. 212, circa 1780, by the workshop of Mir Kalan Khan. Although trained at the Mughal court, the artist Mir Kalan Khan moved to Lucknow around 1750, where he became the principal court painter of Shuja' al-Daula (r. 1754-75) and Asaf al-Daula (r. 1775-98), producing a substantial body of work that has been widely imitated. Here we find his distinctive style, which treats shadows and lighted areas with great subtlety, and pays particular attention to realistic, expansive landscapes, with specific treatment of foliage. Since the 15th century, India has celebrated Diwali and other festivals with firecrackers and fireworks (patakhas). Numerous texts and paintings underline the popularity of this practice, which developed even further in Lucknow at the end of the 18th century, with the introduction of new techniques by the English. Long descriptions of fireworks programs can be found in the sources, notably for the Nawab of Awadh and the Nawab of Bengal in the 18th and 19th centuries.