A Bengali Man Seated in a Chair
Jaipur, 1860-80
Opaque pigments with gold on paper
Image: 18.5 x 12.4 cm
Folio: 21.3 x 15.7 cm
A Bengali man is shown seated in a European style wooden chair with a red shawl draped around his shoulders. His turban is of a sort that was considered fashionable in Bengal during the 19th century. A crudely drawn blue and red curtain hangs above. While the subject of our portrait is luxuriously dressed and finely jeweled, there is little offered here to point towards his identity. Bengali renaissance leaders Ram Mohan Roy and Dwarkanath Tagore come to mind, however, in the absence of inscriptional evidence, one cannot be sure.