This folio is from the Small Clive Album, the majority of which is preserved in Victoria and Albert Museum, London (IS.48-1956). The album was assembled and thought to have been given by the Lucknow Nawab Shuja al-Daula (r. 1754-1775) to Lord Robert Clive (1725-1774) during his final visit to India in 1765-1767. It included earlier paintings, including now-dispersed folios such as this sensitive portrait of a contemplative man seated on a terrace, perhaps a religious personage, a mystic, or a Sufi. The distinctive border of red poppies and pink lilies is found on numerous folios in the Small Clive Album.
The portrait was possibly painted by Gyan Chand (India, active circa 1670-1675) on the comparative basis of the lightly drawn terrace setting and treatment of the sky that are virtually identical to that in Gyan Chand’s portrait of Shayistah Khan, the Mughal Governor of Bengal (d. 1694), now in the British Library (Johnson Album, 22, no. 5).
On the reverse is a stamped seal that reads, Ashraf Khan and Padshah Alamgir (Emperor Aurangzeb, r. 1658-1707), and has a date of 1674-1675 (AH 1085). (Translation by Robert Skelton.) A similar seal is on the reverse of the Shayistah Khan portrait. Ashraf Khan (d. 1685-1686), the head of the Mughal Military Administration (Mir Bakhshi) under Aurangzeb, was the owner of another album in the British Library, London (Ms.Add.18801). (See Toby Falk and Mildred Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library (1981), pp. 93 and 412, no. 109.)
