Page from a Polier Album: Entertainments in a Harem

1780
Mohammed Ali

This sheet is from an album compiled by Colonel Antoine-Louis de Polier (1741–1795), a French-Swiss adventurer and collector resident in India in the middle of the 18th century. The front presents a harem scene with a group of women talking and smoking hookahs in the midst of maidservants, musicians and dancers. The structured background is inspired by the Persian art of gardens. The back bears a calligraphic ghazal or love poem. The Lucknow school revitalised Indian miniature painting and replaced royal and literary epic themes with stand-alone subjects and genre scenes in the form of album pages that proved very popular with local and foreign collectors.