Bibi of John Wombwell

By Arthur William Devis (British, 1762 to 1822)
1795, India, oil on canvas

The young lady, clearly of some significant social standing given the sumptuousness of her dress, has as yet been unidentified. She has long been associated with the status of a bibi – the mistress of a British Company official – but certainly represents a high-born woman of noble birth. 

Reclining on a richly cushioned divan, wearing a saffron coloured sari and sumptuous jewels, the unknown Indian lady depicted in this portrait is clearly somebody of noble birth and high social status. At her side is a gilt stemmed cup overflowing with jewels, while a bihishti lays the dust in the courtyard beyond. It is a scene of opulent leisure and casual refinery. The composition includes a red bolster and cushions with their green and yellow stripped bordering; the tazza like cup with its hanging pearls; the archway and the background figures. The sitter has heavy-lidded eyes; soft, flowing drapery and an elegantly reclining pose. 

Whilst the sitter in the present portrait remains unknown, as Mildred Archer noted, she is too confident in her poise to be an orthodox Muslim woman of rank – who would not have allowed herself to be painted in public – and is most likely the bibi of another high-ranking British official. The term bibi has its roots in the Indian word for ‘princess’ and served as a personalised or intimate reference to the women who first formed relationships with European traders in the seventieth century who were, in fact, mostly princesses of Indian royal families. Young women taken from the royal zenana – sisters, nieces, daughters of the ruling nawab or his brothers – and given in arranged marriages to important European officials, they played an important role in strengthening the diplomatic alliances between a reigning nawab and powerful Company representatives that promoted the political and economic interests of both parties (much in the same way that European royal courts use arranged marriage as a means of strengthening diplomatic ties). Well educated at home by elderly scholars, these noblewomen were literate, often able to speak and read several languages and regional dialects, and schooled in the study of mathematics, history, the natural sciences and medicine. In many cases these marriages produced genuinely happy unions, with the multi-racial offspring they produced further knitting the Indian and European communities together.

The custom of high-ranking British Company officials taking an aristocratic Indian mistress continued as both a social and political necessity well into the eighteenth century, to which a number of known portraits of the mistresses of British officials by the likes of Zoffany, Renaldi and James Wales attest. The practice was finally ended by the Marquess Wellesley when he was Governor-General in the 1790s, following which the British and Indian communities became increasing segregated through the course of the nineteenth century. Archer, in her 1979 catalogue of British artists in India, suggested that the lady in this portrait could be the bibi of John Wombwell, paymaster, treasurer and auditor of accounts of the East India Company in Lucknow.

Fine art, museum quality reproduction print on archival media, offering high quality and lasting durability. Ships unframed.

Artwork via The Met Museum