Source: http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lfsearch/LotDescription.aspx?intObjectId=4892434
(downloaded Apr. 2007)

AN ENGRAVED EMERALD AND DIAMOND SET GOLD RING. BY CARTIER, EMERALD ENGRAVED IN INDIA AND DATED AH 1188/1774-5 AD. The table-cut rectangular emerald carved with a very elegant three-line nasta'liq inscription, set as the bezel of a rounded ring, the shoulders set with diamonds, signed inside the shank Mtd Cartier
Emerald 11/16 x ¾in. (1.7 x 1.8cm.). The emerald is inscribed with the name and titles: "Imtiyaz al-Dawla Iftikhar al-Mulk Anthony Polier Bahadur Arslan Jang 1188."

Lot notes: Colonel Antoine Louis Henri Polier (1741-95) was an adventurer working for first the French and then the English East India Companies. Of Swiss Protestant origin from Lausanne, he joined the English Company after the defeat of the French in southern India. In 1761 he became a Captain Lieutenant in the Company's Engineers. Although promoted to Major in 1767, he found further promotion blocked by the Company's ruling against officers of foreign extraction rising further in its service. Warren Hastings (Governor-General of Bengal, 1773-84) arranged for him to go to Awadh to work as engineer and architect to the Nawab Shuja al-Dawla (1754-75) at the court in Faizabad. Driven from his post through the machinations of Hastings's enemies on the Council in Calcutta, Polier took refuge in the service of the Mughal emperor in Delhi, but was able to return to Awadh in 1780, after Hastings had regained control of his Council, to serve the new Nawab Asaf al-Dawla (1775-97) in Lucknow, the former capital of the province. In Awadh and Delhi, Polier collected spectacularly well both 17th and 18th Century Indian miniatures as well as Persian and other Indian manuscripts. He both collected the best antique work he could find, as well as commissioning new work principally through his favoured retained artist Mihr Chand who was largely responsible for arranging the layout and decoration of the albums made for his collection of paintings. After his return to Europe 1789, Polier sold most of his albums to the collector William Beckford, whence they found their way to Hamilton Palace and then, via auction in these Rooms, to Berlin. Other albums were dispersed from the collection earlier. For a well-illustrated discussion of the albums please see Volkmar Enderlein, Indische Albumblätter, Leipzig and Weimar, 1979.

As befits a man of such artistic appreciation, the nasta'liq on this seal is very fine indeed. It is also interesting to note that, in the atmosphere in India at the time, strongly controlled as it was by the British, Polier has anglicised his first name on the seal. 

Source:  Arts of the Islamic Book: The Collection of Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, by Anthony Welch and Stuart Cary Welch (Ithaca: Cornell University Press for the Asia Society, 1982), p. 128. CU scan, Dec. 1999

"Colonel Polier's Nautch, by Mihr Chand. Oudh, Lucknow or Faizabad; ca. 1780; Page: H. 28.7 cm., W. 39.1 cm.; Miniature: H. 18.9 cm., W. 28.1 cm.

Antoine Louis Henry Polier (1741-1795) left his native Switzerland when he was sixteen years old to serve in the British East India Company as a military engineer. Dissatisfied with the Company, in 1772 he joined the service of Shuja' ud-Daulah, the ambitious Nawab of Oudh, a wealthy and powerful state that inherited some of the status and authority of the Mughal empire in decline. Polier grew quickly rich and assumed many of the roles of a cultured Indian prince: he became a patron of musicians, poets, and painters; collected calligraphies, paintings, and manuscripts; and compiled at least one impressive muraqqa' (album). He also sustained lavish entertainments, one of which is recorded here by Mihr Chand, perhaps the foremost Lucknow painter. Other Europeans also came to Oudh to share in its wealth and luxury, until the Nawabs were completely supplanted by the British during the reign of Asaf ud-Daulah. Polier returned to Europe, married, and was murdered by robbers in 1795....

Humbly written on the floor beneath the couch is the painter's name in Persian: "Mihr Chand, son of Gunga Ram." Mughal-trained and European-influenced, Mihr Chand was the most significant Indian painter in late eighteenth-century Oudh and was known for his fine copies of European portraits as well as for his sensitive original compositions." (pp. 233, 235).

Source: http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/search/LotDetail.asp?sid=&intObjectID=4351348&SE=CMWCAT03+1284853+%2D1425789638+&QR=M+1+79+Aqc0000900+1227778++Aqc0000900+&entry=india&SU=1&RQ=True&AN=80
(downloaded Sept. 2004)

"A LEAF FROM THE POLIER ALBUM: A PERSIAN PRINCE AND HIS ATTENDANT. Gouache heightened with gold on paper, the prince in a lilac and gold tunic sitting against bolster on a white carpet, with attendant in blue tunic and red coat holding sword and hankerchief, with background of green hills, on album page with purple floral sprays and blue borders with gold vine, mounted on backing card, framed and glazed. Folio 15½ x 11 1/3in. (39.5 x 28.5cm.); miniature 5¼ x 3¾in. (13.5 x 9.5cm.)."

Lot Notes: The distinctive mount with a broad band of naturalistic flowers between two narrow borders with stylized floral motifs, and particularly the colouring, indicate that this comes from the Polier Album. A number of paintings from this album are in the Museum für Islamische Kunst, (J. Losty: After the Great Mughals, Mumbai, 2002, pp.43 and 46)."

Source: http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/search/LOTDETAIL.ASP?sid=&intObjectID=4572609&SE=CMWCAT04+106347+%2D1655137794+&QR=M+1+0+Aqc0000900+93051++Aqc0000900+&entry=india&SU=1&SN=7074&RQ=True&AN=1
(downloaded Sept. 2005)

"Lucknow School, circa 1785, possibly after a lost painting by Johann Zoffany. Colonel Antoine-Louis Polier enjoying a nautch at his house in Lucknow; watercolour and bodycolour heightened with gold. 12 1/8 x 13½ in. (30.8 x 34.3)

Lot Notes:  Colonel Antoine Louis Henri Polier (1741-95) was an adventurer working for first the French and then the English East India Companies. Of Swiss Protestant origin, he joined the English Company after the defeat of the French in southern India. In 1761 he became a Captain Lieutenant in the Company's Engineers. Although promoted to Major in 1767, he found further promotion blocked by the Company's ruling against officers of foreign extraction rising further in its service. Warren Hastings (Governor-General of Bengal, 1773-84) arranged for him to go to Oudh to work as engineer and architect to the Nawab Shujah-ud-Dowlah (1754-75) at the court in Faizabad. Driven from his post through the machinations of Hastings's enemies on the Council in Calcutta, Polier took refuge in the service of the Mughal emperor in Delhi, but was able to return to Oudh in 1780, after Hastings had regained control of his Council, to serve the new Nawab Asaph-ud-Dowlah (1775-97) in Lucknow, the former capital of the province. In Oudh and Delhi, Polier collected spectacularly well both 17th and 18th Century Indian miniatures as well as Persian and other Indian manuscripts. He both collected the best antique work he could find, as well as commissioning new work principally through his favoured retained artist Mihr Chand who was largely responsible for arranging the layout and decoration of the albums made for his collection of paintings. After his return to Europe 1789, Polier sold most of his albums to the collector William Beckford, whence they found their way to Hamilton Palace and then to Berlin. Other albums were dispersed from the collection earlier.

Polier commissioned two portraits of himself dressed in Mughal costume and enjoying the domestic felicity of a nabob. One of them is the painting signed by Mihr Chand, now in the late Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan's collection, showing Polier seated on a sofa on a terrace and smoking a hookah while watching a nautch. This probably dates from Polier's first period of duty in Oudh 1773-5. The other, the present painting, shows Polier seated on cushions in the veranda of what must have been his house in Lucknow, watching dancing girls and musicians. This painting is clearly based very closely on a European original. Much new light has been shed on Polier's life and collections through the recent publication of his Persian letters written in 1773-79, A European Experience of the Mughal Orient: the I'jaz-i Arsalani (Persian Letters 1773-79) of ... Polier, trans. and ed. by Muzaffar Alam and Seema Alavi, Delhi, 2001, includes letters to Mihr Chand after Polier had been obliged to quit Oudh, in which he treats the artist as part of his household. Although Mildred Archer and previous writers have regarded this painting as based on a now lost oil by Tilly Kettle of 1772, this attribution must be revised in the light of Polier's letters, which allow his precise movements at this period to be followed. Kettle had returned to Calcutta in early 1773 after painting various portraits of the Nawab Shujah-ud-Dowlah in Faizabad, but Polier did not reach the Oudh capital until the rainy season of that same year. The painting is far more complicated in its subtle compositional layers than anything Kettle had attempted in India, and resembles strongly the painting of the Impey family listening to music, which Zoffany had painted in Calcutta in 1783 just before his departure for Lucknow, the new capital of Oudh under the new Nawab Asaf al-Daula since 1775. If a lost oil by Zoffany infact underlies this present painting, then it can be dated to the mid-1780s. Colonel Polier and his friends are the subject of one of Zoffany's most famous Indian paintings, now in the Victoria Memorial, Calcutta. Scenes of the domestic life of rich Europeans in India are comparatively rare, and the two Polier paintings are comparable with another well known contemporary painting in a private collection showing Lady Impey directing her household in Calcutta (fig. 2) as well as lot 43 showing Sir John Dalling attending a nautch at Tanjore 1785-86.

Western attitudes to the nautch seem to have hardened during the 19th Century; Mrs Kindersley in her Letter from the Island of Teneriffe, Brazil and the Cape of Good Hope, and the East Indies, 1777, pp. 231-2 says 'It is difficult to give you any proper idea of this entertainment; which is so very delightful ... the performance consists chiefly in a continual removing of the shawl, first over the head, then off again; extending first one hand, then the other; the feet are likewise moved, though a yard of ground would be sufficent for the whole performance. But it is their languishing glances, wanton smiles, and attitudes not quite consistent with decency, which are so much admired', however in 1835 Miss Roberts writes in her Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan, pp. 186-7 'The dancing ... though not equally barbarous, is exceedingly tiresome, when, as in the presence of ladies, it is circumscribed within the bounds of propriety; but there are some European gentlemen who acquire the native taste for an exhibition which, when addressed to male eyes alone, is said to be not particularly decorous.' (for further contemporary accounts of the nautch see K.K. Dyson, A Various Universe, A Study of the Journals and Memoirs of British Men and Women in the Indian Subcontinent 1765-1856, Oxford, 2002, pp. 336-356)."