Nawab Shuja' ud-Daula of Awadh

This small portrait is a great window into how art worked at Awadh's court during a period of dramatic cultural mixing. A few things make it significant. The Anglo-Mughal fusion it represents: the portrait shows Shuja ud-Daula in three-quarter face, based on an oil painting by the English artist Tilly Kettle, who worked in India from 1769 to 1776. Art historian Malini Roy has pointed out that Mihr Chand's engagement with Kettle's European-style portrait became the basis for a standard way of depicting the Nawab, since the ruler likely wasn't available to sit for portraits often, especially for artists outside the royal workshop. So this image isn't really a life study, it's essentially a translation of a European painting into Mughal and Awadhi pictorial language. Mihr Chand's own artistic signature comes through despite the borrowed composition. He positions the Nawab in three-quarter profile rather than a frontal gaze, using shadow to render the double chin, cheekbones, and hooded eyes with real specificity. The Nawab wears his signature fur-lined coat and the front-tying turban ornament associated with his reign. Two details in particular show Mihr Chand pushing past older Mughal conventions: he renders the fine creases and near-transparency of the Nawab's cotton jama, with a peach tint suggesting skin beneath the fabric, and he sets the bust against swirling, volumetric clouds that give the portrait an almost three-dimensional depth. Its likely original context is worth noting too. The painting was probably part of an album, possibly meant to face a page of calligraphy or another image, which explains the deliberate direction of the Nawab's gaze, composed with a facing page in mind rather than as an isolated icon. Taken together, the piece captures a moment when Awadhi painters were absorbing European illusionism, meaning modeling, atmosphere, and a sense of volume, while still working within the format and material vocabulary of Mughal album painting. Historians often call this hybrid style Company painting or provincial Mughal painting.