The Bride of the Kuzzelbash Kabul
Watercolour
Afghanistan - 1836
Artist: Vigne, Godfrey Thomas, born 1801 - died 1863

This beautiful young woman was the bride of Murtaza Khan, the head of a family of the Qizilbash tribe, who met Vigne near Ghazni and accompanied him to Kabul. [See the portrait of Murtaza Khan, SD.1118.] The pair of drawings are two of a large group of Persian, Afghan and Indian portraits and landscapes (now mainly in the Searight Collection, the India Office Library and the Royal Geographical Society) that were done by Vigne during his long journey, between 1832 and 1839, through Turkey and Persia to India, and thence northwards to the Western Himalayas and later Afghanistan. Vigne published an account of his Afghanistan trip in A Personal Narrative of a Visit to Ghuzni, Kabul, and Afghanistan (1840). A further visit made by Vigne to the Near East in 1843-44 is also represented by drawings in the Searight Collection.

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