Lit by a young maiden’s candle light, a handsome prince clandestinely ascends a thin, knotted rope to reach his betrothed. The prince has removed his shoes in order to wade through the palace’s moat as his horse and groomsmen keep watch in the rocky foreground. The dramatic night scene is illustriously heightened with gold, from the large onion dome, to the intricate accents seen in the interior architecture, the prince’s jama, and the bejeweled horse saddle.
Compare the painting to a provincial Mughal album page from Lucknow at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (acc. no. M.2013.178) and other provincial Mughal compositions, sold at Christie’s South Kensington, 7 October 2011, lot 384, and Christie's New York, 22 March 2023, lot 397, for $32,750. Paintings of this subject were commissioned in Rajput courts as well. See, for example, a nineteenth-century example from Kotah, published by S.C. Welch in Gods, Kings, and Tigers: The Art of Kotah, London, 1997, pp. 208-9, no. 67. The subject was also popular in the Kishangarh school of painting, see for example a painting sold at Sotheby’s New York, 21-22 March 1990, lot 91.