This cultured painting portrays an elegant princess and her companions enjoying a beautiful day on a palace terrace beside a water fountain, lush flower beds, and blossoming trees. The terrace overlooks a spectacular vista of a lake and mountains alive with pairs of antelope, cranes, and rabbits. The animals are symbolic of loving couples, and are included to contribute to the romantic emotional essence of the painting. The landscape is rendered with European-style perspective, with the figures and buildings diminishing in size as they recede into the distance. Formerly in the renowned William and Mildred Archer collection, London, this well-known published work is a superb example of the highly refined painting produced in Farrukhabad during the peaceful and stable rule of Ahmad Khan Bangash (r. 1750-1771). It is attributed to Muhammad Faqirullah Khan (active circa 1720-1770), who was known for his distinctive elongated figures and oval faces with an aquiline nose. Farrukhabad was a small principality only 80 mi. NW of Lucknow, which rivaled Delhi as an artistic, cultural, and political center during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Farrukhabad painting was heavily influenced by the neighboring Lucknow court’s sophisticated aesthetic traditions. The subject of palace women on a terrace with a distant landscape inspired by European conventions of perspective is regarded as one of the most successful and important compositions favored in Farrukhabad painting. See also M.87.278.9.