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€571,500
For the Louvre
No fewer than five bidders clashed on 11 April, pushing this precious 18th century Mughal album up to €571,500, after
a high estimate of €100,000 (Artcurial). Unfortunately for them, but happily for the national collections, it was finally
pre-empted by the Musée du Louvre. The term "muraqqa" designated an anthology containing Islamic miniatures and
calligraphies, generally from different sources: a type of book much sought-after by enthusiasts of Islam from the 16th
century onwards. This album belonged to James Forbes (1749-1819), a writer employed by the British East India
Company, who spent seventeen years in India from 1765, and was one of the first Europeans to draw the Taj Mahal, in
1781. He returned to England in 1784, and published his four-volume "Oriental Memoirs". The Forbes album seems to
have been compiled at the same period as the thirty miniatures it contains, and was thus contemporary with its
owner's stay in India during the 1770s, under the reign of Emperor Alam II. The paintings were probably produced in
the studios of Murshidabad or Oudh. One of the miniatures shows the Queen of England, Anne of Denmark (1574-
1619), the wife of James I. A 17th century Mughal portrait of her is now in the collections of the Musée Guimet, in Paris.
Sylvain Alliod
74 GAZETTE DROUOT INTERNATIONAL I N° 25
Mughal India, 17th
century. "Muraqqa"
album of thirty
miniatures in gouache,
full page or framed
by borders, bound in
brown leather,
34 x 25 cm.
HD