Maggs Bros. Ltd., London, 1967.

Collect♍ion of William P. Wood (1927-96), President of the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 1976-1980.

This appears to be a very rare tinted drawing likely from the small court of Ahmadnagar in the Deccan, circa 1580-1595. A se𝔉mi clad young holyman holds a small sprig of blossom🙈s in his right hand - his smiling face with its seeming halo of soft fuzzy hair is upraised slightly. His left hand holds a slender staff capped with a dragon's head. His vermilion scarf curls around his otherwise naked upper torso - its edges end in delicate folds which cascade and spread catching a gentle breeze. He holds a blue beggars bag and wear a simple mauve loincloth. He seems to be walking barefoot on water - barely visible and delicately rippling beneath his feet.

This beautiful tinted drawing represents the discovery💃 of a previously unrecorded depiction of an ascetic from late Sixteenth Century Ahmadnagar in the Deccan. He is depicted walking on water in isolation against a natural buff-color ground. Sufi, shaman or Hindu saint? We do not know the identity of this young holyman who may have once been a 🅰prince but who now appears a renunciate and solitary in his pose. It is his ethereal quality that mesmerizes us - he seems to stand walking on water somewhere between heaven and earth.

The present drawing may have a connection to the circle of the Deccani artist known as the so-called "Paris Painter" (based upon similarities to other works attributed to him) who appears to have been active in the court of Burhan nizam al-mulk (r. 1591-1595) of Ahmadnagar, but of whom we know little else. One small detail that connects that artist to our present drawing is the curious, idiosyncratic small line or dot vertically splitting the middle ♚of the lower lip - as well as the mop of fuzzy hair - which is also visiꦚble on some other works attributed to that painter.

Another somewhat more brightly tinted drawing is the very closely related "A Pilgrim" which was sold at Christie's London, 13th June 1983 lot 44 and circa dated 1𝔍570 and Mughal. That work is now in the British Museum (No. 1983,0727,0.1).

Old labels on the reverse of our drawing's rickety frame tentatively describe the work as from the Deccan and Seventeenth Century and was purchased from Maggs in London in 1967. Also an olderinscription initialed SCW (Stuart Cary Welch in November 1985) further re-thinks it to Bijapur circa 1625. These old labels and inscriptions are fascinating because they reveal the gradual process of scholarly re-assessment of the drawing - he൩re from the mind of Stuart Carey Welch himself - one of the greatest scholars in the field.