Major Collection Of Indian Paintings And Calligraphy To Be Offered At Christie's The Art Newspaper International Art News And Events

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Christie's London to Offer Mary and Cheney Cowles's Indian Paintings and Calligraphy, Estimated Above £1.5m

A Seattle couple known for decades of connoisseurship in Asian art is bringing a tightly focused group of Indian paintings and Islamic calligraphy to the London market. On April 28, Christie's will sell works from the collection of Mary and Cheney Cowles, with the auction estimated to realize more than £1.5 million.

The sale is led by Mughal paintings dating from the 16th century through the mid-19th century, with estimates stretching from the low thousands - including some lots offered without reserve - to a top figure of £180,000.

That highest estimate is attached to“Ascetics Encamped Outside a Walled Town, Haryana” (around 1816), a work from the Fraser Album, the sought-after group of paintings commissioned to document 19th-century life in India by the English civil servant William Fraser and his brother, the artist James Baillie Fraser. The Cowles purchased the painting in 1988 from the New York dealer Terence McInerney.

Christie's specialist Plumbly notes that the walled town depicted may be Rania, near Delhi, a place William Fraser is said to have visited frequently. She points to the album's broader ambition: a sustained attempt to record the world its patrons encountered, a documentary impulse that has helped make the Fraser material especially desirable.

Beyond the Fraser Album highlight, the auction reflects the Cowles's particular interests within classical Indian painting. A small group of four works demonstrates how Mughal artists absorbed European motifs and techniques during the reigns of the emperors Akbar (r. 1556–1605) and Jahangir (r. 1605–27), both associated with a courtly curiosity about European art. The selection includes a rare Mughal depiction of the Virgin Mary (1600, est. £30,000–£60,000);“The Angel Raphael Greeting Tobias” (around 1600, est. £30,000–£50,000), a subject that circulated widely among court artists; a depiction of a nursing Madonna (around 1605, est. £40,000–£60,000) ascribed to the prolific court artist La'l; and a secular drawing of a woman seated on a bench (around 1610, est. £20,000–£30,000).

Islamic calligraphy, a central thread in the Cowles's collecting, is represented by a modest but pointed group. Leading it is an early 17th-century Mughal folio from the Brabourne-Ardeshir album, signed by the calligrapher Abdullah al-Husayni, with a painting on the reverse of a courtier holding a book ascribed to Manohar (est. £80,000–£120,000).

The Cowles are long established in the field. Cheney Cowles opened the Crane Gallery in 1975, specializing in East Asian art, and ran it until his retirement in 2016. In 2019, the couple made a joint gift of 550 works of Japanese painting, calligraphy, and ceramics to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Freer Sackler, and the Portland Art Museum. More recently, in 2023, they sold a selection of classical Chinese furniture at Bonhams New York.

Christie's is positioning the April 28 sale against a market backdrop that has recently favored top-tier South Asian material. Last October, the auction house set a new high for any classical Indian or Islamic painting at auction when Basawan's“A Family of Cheetahs in a Rocky Landscape” (around 1575–80) sold for £10.2 million with fees. That work appeared in a single-owner sale from the collection of Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, which brought in £45.8 million from 95 lots - far above its £8 million pre-sale estimate.

Plumbly says the Aga Khan results drew new buyers into the category and underscored the premium placed on museum-quality works with strong documentation. In that context, the Cowles's meticulous record-keeping may prove an advantage as collectors continue to weigh both aesthetic distinction and provenance when bidding in this increasingly competitive field.

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