Col. POLIER's Nautch (Lucknow, c.1780), painted by Mihr Chand.
Source: Arts of the Islamic Book: The Collection of Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, by Anthony Welch and Stuart Cary Welch (Ithaca: Cornell University Press for the Asia Society, 1982), p. 128. CU scan, Dec. 1999
"Colonel Polier's Nautch, by Mihr Chand. Oudh, Lucknow or Faizabad; ca. 1780; Page: H. 28.7 cm., W. 39.1 cm.; Miniature: H. 18.9 cm., W. 28.1 cm.
Antoine Louis Henry Polier (1741-1795) left his native Switzerland when he was sixteen years old to serve in the British East India Company as a military engineer. Dissatisfied with the Company, in 1772 he joined the service of Shuja' ud-Daulah, the ambitious Nawab of Oudh, a wealthy and powerful state that inherited some of the status and authority of the Mughal empire in decline. Polier grew quickly rich and assumed many of the roles of a cultured Indian prince: he became a patron of musicians, poets, and painters; collected calligraphies, paintings, and manuscripts; and compiled at least one impressive muraqqa' (album). He also sustained lavish entertainments, one of which is recorded here by Mihr Chand, perhaps the foremost Lucknow painter. Other Europeans also came to Oudh to share in its wealth and luxury, until the Nawabs were completely supplanted by the British during the reign of Asaf ud-Daulah. Polier returned to Europe, married, and was murdered by robbers in 1795....
Humbly written on the floor beneath the couch is the painter's name in Persian: "Mihr Chand, son of Gunga Ram." Mughal-trained and European-influenced, Mihr Chand was the most significant Indian painter in late eighteenth-century Oudh and was known for his fine copies of European portraits as well as for his sensitive original compositions." (pp. 233, 235).