Gouache heightened with gold on paper, the miniatures laid down on buff card, with dark blue borders, ruled in gold, orange, black and white, with double-sided frame

From a single collection brought to Europe before the middle of the nineteenth century and acquired by a European collector. Paper folder in which the miniatures were kept labelled Dessins Indiens and inscribed in pencil: Il manque 4 dessins prêtes à Mr. Waschmut, peintre à Versailles, le 10 .. 1843. This is the painter Ferdinand Waschmut (d.1859), who studied under Baron Gros and exhibited at the Salon between 1833 and 1859.

The present double-sided Mughal album page originated from a single album assembled in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. Most of the miniatures from the original album depicted princely activities of various kinds, suggesting that their original purpose was to illustrate a Mughal historical text of the nature of the Akbarnama or Baburnama. However, since these two paintings have no accompanying text, and lack any recognisable figures, it is worth simply considering them in the class of paintings intended to stand independently.

The quality and style of the paintings accords with Mughal work produced for sub-imperial patronage towards the end of the sixteenth century. Both of the present miniatures can be compared closely to various manuscripts and groups of paintings executed in a similar style, particularly the Razamnama of 1598 (now in the British Library and dispersed, see Sotheby's 7 October 2009), and two Baburnamas, circa 1591 (British Library) and circa 1597-99 (National Museum).

Although many artists of the period painted in a similar style, these two miniatures have been attributed to Paras, an artist who was active from roughly 1580 to 1600. Indeed an illustration in the British Library Baburnama, circa 1591 (f.347b, published in H. Suleiman, Miniatures of Babur-nama, Tashkent, 1979, pl.50) bears numerous similarities to the presen🃏t hawking scene, including the scallops of paint on the large tree trunk, the treatment of the figures (including the small, almond-shaped eyes) and the grassy bands which blur the transition from one coloured area to another.