Our portrait depicts Akbar II (r. 1806-37) wearing a rich brocaded coat, a fur tippet and a bejewelled hat surmounted by three black feathers. His appearance around 1810-15 is well known from earlier portraits by Ghulam Murtaza Khan (W. Dalrymple and Y. Sharma, Princes and Painters in Mughal Delhi, 1707-1857, Asia Society, New York, 2012, passim). A painting on ivory by Ghulam ‘Ali Khan in the British Library, dated to 1827-28 from an inscription by the Governor-General Lord Amherst, is perhaps the closest in appearance to our portrait (Dalrymple and Sharma 2012, p.45). The tall cap of our portrait is an abbreviation of the even taller one in the British Library portrait adorned with turban ornaments and black feathers and with a similar rich fur tippet.

Two paintings in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (L.Y. Leach, Mughal and other Indian Paintings in the Chester Beatty Library, London, 1995, nos. 7.99 and 7.100) which have been dated to c. 1820, have very similar oval illuminated surrounds with identical inner border, surmounted by a characteristic emblem (a crown for Ghazi al-Din Haidar of Avadh and a lion for Bhim Sen Thapa of Nepal) corresponding to the imperial chattra or umbrella that surmounts our portrait. The handling of the light in the background is also identical. Lucknow artists had to cope with the extremely Europeanised taste of their Nawabs and Kings culminating in the appointment of Robert Home as court painter in 1814 at Lucknow where he remained until 1827. His work and that of his successors permanently influenced Lucknow painting in the 19th century. A Lucknow artist is clearly modelling this portrait on a known one of Akbar II from Delhi and subtly Europeanising it in the Lucknow manner. The Europeanised effect makes his appearance somewhat like that of his son, Bahadur Shah II, hence an earlier confusion in the identity of the sitter where he has been identified as the latter (see J. Seyller, K. Seitz, Mughal and Deccani Paintings – Eva and Konrad Seitz Collection of Indian Miniatures, Zurich, 2010, cat. 34, pp.104-105).