Indian Company School Great Gate, Taj Mahal, Agra

An original 19th-century watercolour painting, Indian Company School, The Great Gate (Darwaza-i rauza) of the Taj Mahal, Agra.

An exquisite Indian Company painting showing the Great Gate (Darwaza-i rauza) of Taj Mahal, Agra. Its distinctive two-tone facade, in red sandstone with white marble inlays, is rendered in miniature with remarkable precision Small figures can be seen walking in the foreground, and the Taj Mahal mausoleum can be seen in the distance beyond.

The Great Gate is one of the components of the Taj Mahal complex, built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his wife Mumtaz Mahal. The Great Gate is the gateway to the gardens which, symbolically, represent Paradise. The Great Gate was therefore a passage between the terrestrial life, illustrated by the inner courtyard, and the spiritual life, represented by the gardens.

This painting is a fine example of an Indian Company painting, produced for Western (especially British) patrons in India in the 19th century, many of whom were working for the East India Company. It displays the striking hybrid techniques which led to the categorisation of the ‘Company’ style as a School. While incorporating traditional elements from Rajput and Mughal painting, they were given a more 'western' appearance through their use of perspective and rounded modelling, as opposed to the more decorative, 'flatter' styles that had gone before.

In watercolour on watermarked cream wove paper: J & M with plumed coronet above.

Inscribed verso in Persian script, referring to the victorious Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan.

Provenance: from a early 19th-century British album dated 1825 and associated with the Pridham family of Topsham, Devon. William Collyns Pridham (1791–1815) died at Madras in 1815 and his brother Henry Blake Pridham (1794–1826) died at Calcutta, West Bengal in 1826.