24 paintings of Tipu victory on British to be auctioned

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A set of 24 paintings, which depict Tipu Sultan’s victory over the British at the Battle of Pollilur in 1780, will be auctioned by Sotheby’s as part of its Arts of the Islamic World next week.
The set of paintings, which are made of ink and gouache on rice-paper backed with cotton, is estimated to sell for between £650,000 and £800,000 on October 6. A 17th century Mughal painted and dyed floorspread from Golconda, measuring approximately 500 cm square, is also on offer among other Mughal and Deccan linked objects at the sale. The floorspread, which was once in the collection of the Amber Palace, Jaipur, is estimated to sell for £100,000 — £150,000.
The Tipu paintings, which were in Seringapatam until 1799 when Tipu Sultan was killed, are likely to have been produced by an Indian artist after the battle, which was fought during the Second Anglo-Mysore War (1780-1784).
Tipu’s father Haider Ali was killed in 1782 and Tipu took over as the Nizam of Mysore and ruled for 17 years till his death in 1799.
After the battle, Tipu had commissioned a mural to commemorate his father’s victory and it was installed in the Daria Daulat Palace in Seringapatam in 1784. The mural and the set of paintings to be auctioned depict Tipu and Haider Ali, wearing royal garments, riding elephants and surrounded by their army, French mercenaries and the Maratha troops, to go and face the British Army, which was crushed in the battle, one of the worst defeats of the East Indian Company at the time.
The paintings fell into British hands when Colonel John William Freese acquired them after his appointment as commissary of stores at Seringapatam in 1802. His descendant, the 9th Earl of Lanesborough, sold the paintings in 1978 to a UK collector, who in turn sold the paintings in 1981 to the current owner, who remains unidentified. In 1983, the paintings were on exhibition for six months at the Tower House, Kensington, home of rock star Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin. There are also notations on the paintings, suspected to have been made by a British officer who was either at the battle or had direct knowledge of the sequence of events.
The paintings were probably originally part of two large scrolls approximately 7 feet by 30 feet and represent three-fourths of the original cartoon. Originally attributed to post-1840 by their military costumes, the paintings have undergone extensive tests and further research indicating that the English military uniforms as they now appear are misleading and revealing the actual date of production is likely to have been in a period shortly after 1780.