Indian Company School The Great Gate, Taj Mahal, Agra

An original early 19th-century watercolour painting, Indian Company School, The Great Gate, Taj Mahal, Agra.

A beautifully intricate and intensely coloured Indian Company school miniature in ink and watercolour. This painting shows the beautiful Great Gate, or Darwaza-i-rauza, which is the main entrance to the Taj Mahal complex at Agra. The Great Gate is the gateway to the gardens which, symbolically, represent Paradise. It therefore represents 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 miniature painting, produced for Western 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. As an objective architectural elevation it uniquely combines scientific European rationalism with the attention to detail and intense colouring of the Mughal miniature tradition.

Provenance: Mary Twopenny from her cousin David Twopenny, Little Casterton, 1832. David Twopenny, commoner at Oriel College, Oxford and lifelong Vicar of Stockbury in Kent, was a collector of art (a sale of his collection at Christie’s included an extensive collection of fine engravings after Turner).

In watercolour with pen and ink. On wove paper laid down on backing paper.