![]() ![]() The painting shows a scene from August 1765, when the young Mughal emperor Shah Alam, exiled from Delhi and defeated by East India Company troops, was forced into what we would now call an act of ‘involuntary privatisation’. The prince is eagerly thrusting a scroll into the hands of a slightly overweight Englishman in a red frock coat. On his left stand scimitar- and spear-carrying officers from his own army to his right, a group of powdered and periwigged Georgian gentlemen. ![]() An effete Indian prince, wearing cloth of gold, sits high on his throne under a silken canopy. ![]() It is not a masterpiece, but it does repay close study. The picture hangs in the shadows over a doorway in a wooden chamber at the top of a dark, oak-panelled staircase. Such is the dazzle of these treasures that, as a visitor last summer, I nearly missed the huge framed canvas that explains how all this loot came to be here. ![]()
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