Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.13445

    Equestrian portrait

    Date
    1815
    Creator
    Unknown, Engraver
    After
    Unknown Deli artist (Indian) , Artist
    Object type
    Library reference
    RCN38165
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (print): 280mm
    width (print): 210mm
    Subject
    Content object
    nature
       > landscape
    Description
    Equestrian portrait showing the costume of an official of the Court of the King of Caubul (Afghanistan). The illustration is intended as a portrait of the office, rather than of a specific individual. Side view of a mounted man on a black horse, wearing a blue tunic tied with a patterned sash. He wears a plumed and curled head-dress and carries a curved sword.

    Plate 14 from Mountstuart Elphinstone's An account of the Kingdom of Caubul and its dependencies in Persia, Tartary, and India… (London, 1815), an account of his embassy to the ruler of Afghanistan, Shuja Shah Durrani Khan (1785-1842) in 1808.

    Inscribed ‘PL. XIV. The Umla Baushee in his Dress of Office. Published by Messrs. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, Paternoster Row, 1815.’

    According to the accompanying text, ‘Each of the branches [of the court and household]…is distinguished by a particular dress…’

    Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779–1859), East India Company administrator from 1776, known for his periods as Resident at Poona and Governor of Bombay in the 1810s and 1820s, and involvement in the Anglo-Maratha wars.
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Asia
          > India
    <The World>
       > Asia
          > Afghanistan
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