DeangeloKater: starting new stub

2026-03-18T06:41:33Z

starting new stub

New page

{{Infobox artwork/wikidata|image_size=270px}}
'''''Portrait of Muhammad Dervish Khan''''' is an oil-on-canvas portrait painting by [[Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun]], from 1788. It is held in a private collection.

==History==
It featured in the 2004 exhibition ''Encounters: the Meeting of Asia and Europe 1500-1800'' at the [[Victoria and Albert Museum]] where it first received international attention as an unusually monumental portrait of a man from [[Mysore]]. Muhammad Dervish Khan was one of three ambassadors to the French court sent by [[Tipu Sultan]].

After finishing the portraits and leaving them with the ambassadors to dry, Vigée Le Brun sought their return in order to exhibit them in the [[Salon (Paris)|Salon]]; one of the ambassadors refused the request, stating that a painting "needs a soul", and hid the paintings behind his bed. Vigée Le Brun managed to secure the portraits through the ambassador's valet, which enraged the ambassador to the point that he wished to kill his valet, but he was dissuaded from doing so as "it was not custom in Paris to kill one's valet". She falsely convinced the ambassador that the King wanted the portraits, and they were exhibited in the Salon of 1789. Unknown to the artist, these ambassadors were later executed upon their return to Mysore for failing in their mission to forge a military alliance with [[Louis XVI]]. After [[Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun|her husband's]] death, the paintings were sold along with the remnants of his estate, and Vigée Le Brun did not know who possessed them at the time she wrote her memoirs.<ref>{{cite book
|last=Vigée Le Brun
|first=Élisabeth Louise
|title=Memoirs of Madame Vigée Lebrun
|translator=Lionel Strachey
|publisher=Doubleday, Page & Company
|location=New York
|year=1903
|url=https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/lebrun/memoirs/memoirs.html
|access-date=2026-03-17
}}</ref>

The portrait was never sold, though Vigée Le Brun fled Paris and left it behind when the city was mobbed.

==Provenance==
The portrait of ''Mahomet Dervisch-Kam, premier ambassadeur de Typpo-Sultan'' was shown in the [[Paris salon]] of 1789 in her absence, along with an even taller monumental portrait of ''Mahomet Usman-Kam, second ambassadeur de Typpo-Sultan'' that she painted (whereabouts unknown).<ref>[https://archive.org/details/cataloguesofpari1785acad/page/n150 Paintings by Mme Le Brun, Académicienne] in the 1789 Paris Salon catalog on archive.org</ref> Both paintings were admired greatly, partly because the ambassadors themselves had made quite a spectacle the year before. All three ambassadors returned to India without achieving the sought-for alliance and their heads were chopped off by order of the sultan, giving both paintings even more allure for their grim symbolism.

==Art market==
It was sold at [[Sotheby's]] for $7,185,900, at 30 January 2019.<ref>[http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2019/master-paintings-evening-n10007/lot.48.html Sotheby's, 30 January 2019]</ref>

<gallery>
File:Charles-Eloi Asselin - Promenade of the Ambassadors of Tipu Sultan in the Park of Saint-Cloud.jpg|''Promenade of the Ambassadors of Tipu Sultan in the Park of Saint-Cloud'', by Charles-Eloi Asselin
File:Louis XVI Receives the Ambassadors of Tipu Sultan 1788 Voyer after Emile Wattier 19th century.jpg|[[Louis XVI]] receives the ambassadors in 1788 negotiating [[Franco-Indian alliances]]
File:Charles de Wailly - Salon de Paris, 1789 lpdp 82552-1.jpg|Paintings on display at the 1789 salon, by Charles De Wailly
</gallery>

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
* [http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2019/master-paintings-evening-n10007/lot.48.html Sotheby's auction record], 30 January 2019
* [https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/the-volatile-saga-behind-elisabeth-louise-vigee-le-bruns-portrait-of-indias-ambassador-to-france The Volatile Saga behind Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun's Portrait of India's Ambassador to France] Sotheby's blog, 10 January 2019

{{Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Portrait of Muhammad Dervish Khan}}
[[Category:Paintings by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun]]
[[Category:Portraits of men]]
[[Category:1788 paintings]]
[[Category:Portraits by French artists]]
[[Category:Oil paintings on canvas]]
[[Category:Works about diplomats]]
[[Category:18th-century portraits]]
[[Category:Artworks exhibited at the Salon of 1789]]

Portrait of Muhammad Dervish Khan - Revision history

DeangeloKater: starting new stub