This portrait of a bejewelled Hindu courtier was painted by Tilly Kettle in India between 1769 and 1776 and is an opulent example of the type of formal portraiture which became popular in the Indian sub-continent following the expansion of the British empire.

Lured to India by the rumours of opportunity, fame, and fortune, Tilly Kettle set sail in December 1768 and arrived in Madras in June 1769. He is considered the first British portrait painter of consequence to work in India, and between 1769 and 1776 Kettle painted a series of defining portraits of local princely rulers and East India Company officials based in and around Madras and Calcutta.

His first major commission in India was a group portrait of Muhammad Ali Khan, Nawab of Arcot, and his five sons which was supposedly gifted to Charles Bourchier, Governor of Madras and exhibited in London at the Society of Artists in 1771. This work was later cut down and now only the central figure survives.[1] Following this prestigious commission, demand for his portraits soared and it was in these initial eighteen months in Madras that Kettle painted some of his most successful works. It was during this period that the present portrait was most likely painted, an assumption supported by the stylistic similarities it shares with known works by Kettle from this date, the most pertinent being the celebrated full-length portrait of Muhammad Ali Khan in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which shows the same shimmering detail in the garments and the near full-face depiction of the sitter’s head with precisely delineated eyes.

Although the sitter’s identity has yet to be confirmed, he was evidently a member of a high-caste Hindu family and is dressed in a Moghul style court outfit for a special occasion, perhaps a durbar or a religious festivity. The elegant headcover (pagri) features a golden silk headband fastened with a Mughal turban ornament (sarpech) in the shape of a stylised feather. This is made of emeralds set in gold and adorned by pendant emeralds, beads, and pearls. The sumptuous lamé surcoat (angharka) is woven with golden and silver threads of silk and embroidered with a motif of green stems and yellow flowers (buti). Featuring a gold trimmed high collar, the surcoat is buttoned to the neck indicating the new fashion for Persian coats, which started towards the end of the Eighteenth Century. The curved blade sword with an open guard hilt, a disc pommel and a short quillon, decorated with a red tassel, is a talwar. This type of sword could indicate the sitter’s position as chief advisor to a Nawab. The Persian dagger, called Pesh-Kabz, has a blade tapering to a slender point and a flattened ivory hilt with a delicate round moulding. Both sword and dagger were typical of the Deccan area. A fashionable Moghul flower-shaped medallion with a pearl pendant attached to the pearl and emerald necklace (Mala) hides behind the precious Pesh-Kabz hilt. Two large gold wire hoop earrings decorated with pearls are identical to those worn by the peshwas of the Maratha states. The earrings, together with the pagri, seem to suggest this Hindu may have been born to or related to one of the leading Maratha families of Maharashtra (such as Bhonsle, Holkar, Sindhia). Alternatively, he could be a minor ruler or minister in a Marathi-speaking region of the Deccan, such as Tamil and the surrounding areas.

From a religious standpoint, the sitter is recognised as a follower of Shiva. The devotional marking on the forehead is a sandalwood-coloured tripundra with a red bindu in the middle of the three lines. The black dot between the eyebrows could be a propitious mark against bad luck (for instance, before going to war). In general, the marks on the body have led specialists to believe that Kettle’s sitter was a Maratha or Marathi speaking Brahmin, possibly Chitpavan, Kannada or Tamil Brahmin. The Chitpavans, for instance, were generally non- priestly Brahmins employed by the Peshwas and other courts and were valued for their mild temperament and reliable performance of commercial or administrative tasks. Some of them were wealthy intermediaries and collaborators who supported the complex administration of the Deccan. They worked as head clerks and interpreters (dubash), skilled diplomats (vakeel) or secretaries of state (chitnis). These professionals frequently patronised Western artists such as Kettle.

The sitter was perhaps a resident at, or visitor to, Chepauk Palace, the Nawab of Arcot’s official residence built just outside the walls of Fort St. George in 1767 at the beginning of the First Anglo-Mysore War. The durbar at Chepauk Palace was famously large and was one of the very few Indian courts outside the Marathi-speaking world to accommodate Marathi Brahmins. The Diaries of George Paterson as Secretary to the Naval Commander-in-Chief, East Indies 1769-75[2] reveal the large number of officers who were working for the Nawab at the time Kettle was in Madras. Diwan Rayoji, a Brahmin boy born in Bhuvanagiri, was acting as manager of the Arcot Subah. A Hindu called Papaiya Brahman and another Brahmin called Vandalur Venkatachellum Pillai were working as Dubash, whilst a Maratha Vakil called Madhav Rao Sadashiv was sent from Peshwa Madhavrao I to promote an alliance between the Marathas, the Nawab and the British Government against Hyder Ali of Mysore. However, by the end of 1770 it also notes that ‘all the Vaqueels of the different powers’ visited Josias Du Pre, the Governor of Madras. This suggests that Kettle may have met with several Marathi-speaking Hindu Shaivite diplomats and visitors, making the pool of potential candidates for the present work considerably large.

Previously in the collection of grand couturier Hubert de Givenchy, the importance of this portrait lies in the realistic details of the rich, shimmering costume and in the communicative power of its fabrics, jewellery, and armour, which – in its apparently effortless exotic disguise – signal the unfathomable depth of the sub-continent’s cultural and political connotations and contradictions. On the other hand, the honest rendering of the gentle disposition of the Hindu sitter, portrayed at a time when all things Oriental were sought-after but were only just beginning to be assimilated by the Western eye, conveys the artist’s spirit of unaffected curiosity and appreciation. This quality seems untainted by the colonialist endeavours of the East India Company.

[1] Milner, J.D. ‘Tilly Kettle 1735-1786’, The Walpole Society, Vol. 15, 1926-7, p. 90.

[2] British Library (BL Mss Eur 379)