Themes in Indian Painting A Festival at the Nawab of Oudh's Palace Opaque watercolor and ink on paper Mughal (Oudh), 1850 Museum Purchase, The Arthur and Margaret Glasgow Fund 89.26 As imperial Mughal power began to fade in the 18th and 19th centuries, several provincial centers within the Mughal empire rose to prominence. Oudh, a state in north-central India, paid lip service to the Mughal emperor but gradually developed into a full-fledged separate court under a ruler known as a nawab. The obsessive detail, feverish activity, and Indo-European style of this eccentric painting admirably capture the cosmopolitan decadence of mid-19th-century Oudh. The painting depicts the celebration of a festival inside the arcaded walls of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah's palace. Swarms of figures converge on several enclosures, the first of which houses the nawab. Oudh's rulers were colorful men: Wajid Ali Shah, for example, was an imbecile who enjoyed the company of eunuchs, fiddlers, and dancing girls. Image at : http://www.vmfa.state.va.us/worlds/worlds_nawab_89_26.html ----- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Nagpur, India