LAST CHANCE TO SAVE CLIVE OF INDIAS JEWELLED MUGHAL TREASURE

13 Oct 2004 11:45 AM

Arts Minister Estelle Morris has placed a temporary export bar on four beautiful Mughal items, once the property of Robert Clive (1725-1774). "Clive of India" led a varied and controversial life resulting in a huge personal fortune. His possession of such sumptious Mughal artefacts not only emphasises his extraordinary wealth, but also alludes to his high position among the social hierarchy of eighteenth-century India.

The items are a rare survival of a fully documented 18th century British collection of Indian art, recording an encounter between very different cultural traditions. They consist of a unique 17th century jewelled jade flask, its quality suggesting that it was made for the Mughal court; a banded agate and garnet flywhisk handle; a ceremonial dagger with jewelled jade hilt; and an enamelled silver huqqa set with sapphires and rubies.

Robert Clive was sent to India aged eighteen as a clerk for the East India Company where later in his career he took command of a Company military force, proving himself to be a good tactitian. He won fame and was lauded as a National hero in Britain when he defeated the Nawab of Bengal at the battle of Plassey in June 1757. He later became British governor of Bengal, and one of the founders of British rule in India. However his huge personal wealth resulted in an accusation of financial irregularities, provoking a debate in Parliament. He never recovered from the scandal, and the depression that had plagued him throughout his life resulted in his suicide in November 1774.

Estelle Morris's ruling follows a recommendation by the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art that the export decision be deferred. The deferral will enable purchase offers to be made to purchase any or all of the artefacts at the following agreed fair market price(s):

A flask, lined with silver and covered with jade set with rubies and emeralds in gold deferred at the recommended price of 2,972,768.75; an inset banded agate and garnet flywhisk handle deferred at the recommended price of 918,968.75; a Mughal ceremonial gem-set jade hilted dagger deferred at the recommended price of 747,818.75; a sapphire and ruby inset enamelled silver huqqa set deferred at the recommended price of 97,448.75 (including VAT). The above items are deferred until after 13 December 2004 with the possibility of an extension until after 13 March 2005 if there is a serious intention to raise funds with a view to making an offer to purchase any one or more of them.

The Committee have also awarded a starred rating to the jewelled jade flask, meaning that every possible effort should be made to raise enough money to keep it in the country.

Anyone interested in making an offer to purchase one or more of the Mughal items should contact the owner's agent through:

The Secretary
The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art
Department for Culture, Media and Sport
2-4 Cockspur Street
London
SW1Y 5DH

Notes to Editors

1. Pictures of these items can be downloaded free of charge from our site on PA Picselect. Please go to the DCMS folder situated within the Arts section of Picselect either at www.papicselect.com or through the PA bulleting board.

2. All these pieces were first acquired by Robert Clive (1725-1774), and were subsequently inherited by his son Edward Clive. Robert Clive's ownership is beyond question: the flask was listed in a 1775 inventory of his collection, while the ceremonial dagger, flywhisk handle and silver huqqa set were included in all three inventories of his collection drawn up in 1766, c. 1774 and 1775. They all passed by direct descent to Viscount Clive (1904-1942), who died on active service in the Second World War. All were originally to have been displayed at Robert Clive's villa at Claremont in Esher, Surrey, which was designed by 'Capability' Brown and was almost complete at the time of Clive's suicide in 1774. Edward Clive sold Claremont in 1786, and the collection was eventually transferred to Powis Castle in 1801, which was inherited by Edward Clive's wife, Lady Henrietta Herbert, after the death of her brother, the 2nd Earl of Powis.

3. Powis Castle, the repository of the Indian collections formed by Robert and by Edward Clive and his wife, was bequeathed to the National Trust in 1952. At that time, the four objects were owned by Mrs Vida Schreiber, who had inherited them from her first husband, Viscount Clive. She lent the jewelled flask to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1963, where it was displayed in the Indian Primary Gallery, and the other three pieces to the National Trust at Powis Castle in 1987 for its new Clive Museum. They remained on display at the V&A and at Powis until Mrs Schreiber's death.

4. After Mrs Schreiber's death, they were sold with a fifth object of identical provenance at Christie's, London, on 27 April 2004 as lots 156 (flask), 157 (flywhisk), 158 (dagger) and 160 (huqqa) of the Spring sale of Islamic Art and Manuscripts. entitled The Clive of India Treasure. Magnificent Mughal Objects,

5. The provenance makes each object important both historically and in terms of the study of its particular field. The study of Mughal decorative arts is greatly hindered by the lack of reliably datable artefacts. Few are signed or dated, and provenances are rare before the early 19th century, in large measure due to the political turmoil of the 18th and 19th centuries, which led to the looting or dispersal of the great royal collections. In the 18th century, a number of Europeans in India keenly collected Indian artefacts, but few have survived with provenances as early as those in Clive's possession.

6. These pieces are additionally unusual because it is probable he acquired them primarily as a result of his status. The objects are, therefore, a reflection of 18th century Indian court culture and the way in which the British engaged with it, rather than simply a reflection of 18th century British taste.

7. The Mughal jewelled jade wine flask is unique. Datable to the reign of the emperor Jahangir (1605-1627), it is a superb example of an object belonging to a new courtly tradition: the making of artefacts using nephrite jade. Its provenance before the mid-18th century, when it came into Clive's possession in India, is unknown. Christie's cataloguer tentatively suggested it had come from the enormously rich treasury of the Nawab of Bengal which was opened to Clive after his famous victory at Plassey in 1757. This event provoked Clive's equally famous remark, made in retrospect, "By God at this moment, do I stand astonished at my own moderation" in not taking more at the time. It is also conceivable that the flask was given to Clive by the emperor Muhammad Shah, by now impoverished and ruling much of the formerly great Mughal empire in name only, but still apparently owning a few sumptuous, inherited objects.

8. The flask is of immense significance with regard to the rapidly evolving study of Mughal jade. It is also of great importance to the 18th century history of England and her relations with India because of its direct association with Clive, and the implications of his ownership of such a de luxe royal Mughal object. Finally, its craftsmanship is of the highest quality, demonstrating the skills of Mughal court lapidaries and goldsmiths in the early 17th century.

9. Seemingly functional objects such as the flywhisk handle (which would originally probably have had a yak's tail in it), dagger and huqqa (water-pipe, or "hubble-bubble"), had added significance as indicating high status. Given the quality of the dagger and flywhisk, they may have been presented to Clive following the award of the infamous jagir , the grant of revenue from a particular piece of land, made to him in 1759. Typically, assignments of land "in jagir" were the usual method of payment in the Mughal aristocratic bureaucracy, and by accepting it, Clive technically became a servant of the Mughal empire. This implied holding a specific rank, and would almost certainly also have implied owning particular emblems suitable to the rank.

10. The dagger probably dates to the early 18th century , as Mughal paintings of this date show broadly similar hilt forms worn by courtiers of Aurangzeb and his successors after his death in 1707. A closely comparable hilt, complete with shaped finger grips, may be seen in a painting in the V&A of Aurangzeb's grandson, the emperor Jahandar Shah (r. 1713). Many daggers must have been made in the court workshops for presentation to nobles from all over the empire, and were preserved in regional treasuries, as is apparent from the occasional inventories to have survived; few are now known that have any provenance, or that compare so closely with examples in paintings, and the Clive dagger is therefore a key landmark in establishing a typology of 18th century Mughal hilts.

11. The banded agate flywhisk with garnet cup-shaped terminal is rarer, and its simpler form makes it almost impossible to date by comparison with representations in painting. Robert Skelton noted in the 1987 Powis catalogue that it was of a type "carried by persons of rank as an indication of status rather than for use by an attendant" and dated it to the mid-18th century. The absence of references to flywhisks in contemporary Persian-language texts, or in English accounts, makes the Clive piece all the more important, again because of its provenance, and especially in view of its very accomplished manufacture.

12. The enamelled huqqa may have been presented to Clive, but it is more probable that it was a personal commission made in order to emphasise his own status. Though not of highest court quality - the stones are natural white sapphires rather than diamonds, and it is made of silver not gold - it is an ostentatious piece. The enamel is typical of the Lucknow court, and the provenance makes it a rare example of 18th century work from a renowned centre. It therefore provides a primary reference with which to compare the designs and colour palette of the large number of surviving, unprovenanced, Lucknow enamels in other forms, notably sword hilts. Smoking had been introduced to the Indian subcontinent in the early 17th century and by the end of the 17th century was ubiquitous. In painting, it became a standard cliche to represent the ruler with his huqqa, and when the British in India adopted the habit they, too, had themselves shown reclining against brocade-covered bolsters on a terrace, peacefully smoking.

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