Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c15.18

c15.18

Such was the nature of the monarch who, at this all-important stage, had the moulding of the art of painting in his hands, and the wonder is, not that it flourished, but that it did not rise to higher flights, soaring into the realms of the romantic or idyllic, with such a spirit to lead it on. In spite, however, of Jahangir’s poetical temperament, which would cause him to remark of a perfume that ‘it restores hearts that have gone and brings back withered souls’, Mughal painting, in the hands of its actual exponents, remained intrinsically an art of prose, its acknowledged intention being frank realism, an effort to represent the object ‘as in itself it really is’. Under Jahangir’s refined supervision, the artists, excellent craftsmen as they were, produced some of the best Indian miniatures, and no painters under any other king ever excelled them. But at the back of all their art, reflected in every aspect of it, and especially in the selection of the subject-matter, we see the workings of Jahangir’s artistic mind ; the painter supplied the hereditary skill, and all the training and experience necessary to translate in terms of tone and form and colour the object he desired to produce. But the mainspring of the movement lay in the unerring intuition of this royal aesthete for all things beautiful, and his faculty for inspiring this in those around him. In a word, Jahangir supplied the aesthetic fact—the artist’s vision—while his court painters provided the physical fact—the externalization of that vision—the two co-operating to produce the actual work of art. In studying the painting of this period we shall see how the ideals of the emperor and the skill of the craftsmen were combined in the highest attainment of the Mughal school.