Portrait of an Indian Woman

Portrait of an Indian Woman is a small portrait in opaque watercolour on card, measuring 21.7 × 13.6 cm. According to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA, accession no. 2001.136), it was made about 1773, probably at Lucknow or Faizabad, and is attributed to Mihr Chand. The museum bought it from the dealer Sam Fogg in 2001. My own observation of this image sees a woman standing in an arched doorway. This is painted in such a natural manner to show a woman who is turning slightly to one side, while also gazing away from the viewer, as though something outside the frame has caught her attention. She wears a headcover in red and gold over a long, beautiful white gown. Her pearls and bracelets look elegant. The artist uses shading and receding lines to build space. The arch and columns look solid and rounded, and the carpet’s diamond pattern shrinks toward the back of the room. It makes the space feel three-dimensional and places the figure inside it. According to Roy (2010), Mihr Chand, son of Ganga Ram, was among the finest artists active at Faizabad and Lucknow in the second half of the eighteenth century. Roy notes that he worked under the patronage of the East India Company officer Antoine Polier and that most of his known works are in the Polier-Hamilton albums in Berlin. Her comparison of those albums with the collections of Polier’s contemporaries identifies source material for six of his works. Roy’s finding shows that Mihr Chand drew on existing images, a practice that may also bear on this portrait. Subrahmanyam (2000) treats Polier’s career as part of the early history of European Orientalism. His account supplies the setting for Mihr Chand’s workshop: a court where a European officer collected and commissioned Indian art. The volume edited by Weis (2025) studies the albums made in eighteenth-century India for rulers in Awadh, local elites in Bengal and Bihar, and Europeans. It includes a chapter by Seyller on Mihr Chand’s copies and adaptations of earlier Mughal paintings. According to its title and the book’s description, copying and adapting were part of the workshop’s practice. The MFA (2001.136) attributes the portrait to Mihr Chand, a late Mughal painter associated with the court of Nawab Shuja-ud-Daula of Awadh and known for his engagement with European artistic styles (Roy 2010). The date of about 1773 falls within the period when he was active in the Awadh court milieu, and the portrait’s modelled forms and ordered architectural space are consistent with that engagement. The museum’s record does not name the sitter, and its generic title leaves her status open. Her richly detailed dress and jewellery place her within the elite visual culture of the court. Given the workshop practice of copying and adapting existing images described by Roy (2010), the portrait may represent a courtly type as much as a specific individual. Establishing her identity remains a question for further archival and comparative.