No documented ownership history prior to its current holding is available in accessible sources. The painting is part of The David Collection, Copenhagen, established by C. L. David (1878–1960); the collection's Islamic art holdings, including this piece, come from David's personal acquisitions and the foundation's continued collecting after his death in 1960.
A Palace Complex with Harem Gardens, is from the 1700s, which was painted by Faiz Allah, also spelled Faizullah or Fayzullah, probably in Lucknow or Faizabad, or somewhere in the northern India which was the Awadh region around 1765. Nowadays, it sits at The David Collection in Copenhagen. It's a small piece which is painted on paper using opaque watercolour with gold, roughly around 45.5 by 31.8 cm.
This lovely painting squeezed the whole Palace into one picture, with its gardens, terraces, courtyards, buildings, water features. It’s amazing to see how your eye just keeps moving around the painting, jumping from one building to another, through the gardens, past all these tiny little figures scattered around. That’s the true work of a true artist.
Moving on to the most magnanimous gardens which honestly is the best part of the whole artwork. They give off this real sense of comfort and wealth, water channels, look at the fountains, trees, and everything arranged just right to show off this well-kept royal space. And the title itself points right at the harem gardens, again the private, domestic side of palace life. Rather than rulers, battles, or big ceremonies like a lot of court paintings do, this one focuses on the quieter, and more private side of court life.
It is hard to imagine in today’s society this kind of period that Awadh genuinely was. The actual buildings from this time are long gone. Historian Ira Mukhoty also states that the palaces built along the Ghaghara River in Faizabad between 1765 and 1775 can now only be seen in paintings or as ruins.
One detail that really stands out to me, in the distance you can spot the prince riding an elephant, and on the other side of the river there's all this activity going on, a real contrast to the calm, almost idle stillness of the women in the harem. That contrast feels intentional, it puts this private, sheltered world right up against a busier, more public one just across the water.
Faizullah also plays around with space in a strange way. The buildings and gardens are painted from all different angles at once, and some parts of it look like you're looking down from above, others like you're looking straight into them. Actually, he knew about European linear perspective, he just chose not to follow its rules, whether that was on purpose or just how he naturally worked isn't totally clear. Either way, it let him pack more of this huge, complicated building into one single image.
To me, what makes this painting worth looking at is that it shows the palace as both a real place and kind of an idealized version of royal life. It's got wealth and order, sure, but also this sense of everyday movement and activity happening within it.
So it's not just some architectural drawing, it gives you a real feel for how the Awadhi court wanted its private world, its gardens, its whole way of living, to be remembered.
The themes of spatial restriction, imperial decline, and the conflict between the public and private spheres in eighteenth-century India are at the heart of A Palace Complex with Harem Gardens. The painting depicts the harem as an opulent, isolated sanctuary. The stiff walls highlight the women's tight seclusion from the outside world despite the area's stunning architecture, verdant surroundings, and running water. Painted around 1765, the artwork depicts a period when regional courts, such as Awadh, were emerging and the central Mughal Empire was falling. The palace's fantasy aspect implies an attempt to conceal the period's real political unrest by projecting enormous wealth and security. Inspired by European prints, the artist Faiz Allah employs deep receding horizons and an aerial perspective.
