λ FOUR INDIAN IVORY MINIATURES WITH FEMALE PORTRAITS PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE LONDON COLLECTOR Delhi, Madras and Patna, India, 19th century Comprising a profile portrait of an elegant Western woman, dressed with lavish Indian garments according to the local high-class fashion, the fair skin, the blue eyes and the light hair colour betraying her foreign origin, her Indian jewellery normally associated with weddings, possibly hinting at the miniature as a wedding gift, set within an oval glazed copper medallion and backed in brown velvet, 9.5cm x 6.5cm; a three-quarter view of a curly dark-haired woman depicted in a palatial interior overlooking the sea, a ship in the distance possibly hinting at the location, a harbour city, or linking the subject or commissioner to trade and the East India Company, set within a brown velvet lined, glazed black leather box, 9.5cm x 8cm; and two oval portrait miniatures with motherly scenes, an Indian mother feeding her child sitting on a Western-inspired chair, mounted, glazed and framed, 12.8cm x 11.8cm including the frame, and an unframed miniature with a dark-skinned Indian woman holding in her arms a fair-skinned and blue-eyed child, signed M.I. , the back inscribed in French Madras and Indienne , 6cm x 5cm. A companion watercolour of the miniature of the curly dark-haired woman, attributed to the artist Shiva Daya Lal, painted in Patna around 1850 ca., is in the Victoria and Albert Museum (inv. no. IS.101-1949). The watercolour shows clear influences from 19th-century British illustrations and the subject works as the stock motif of an idealised female type repeatedly reproduced across India in the 19th century. This item may require Export or CITES licences in order to leave the UK or the European Union. It is the buyer's responsibility to ensure that lots have the relevant licences before shipping.