Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c16.25

c16.25

Owing largely to intelligent travellers from over the seas now arriving in India and recording their impressions, we are enabled to get a clearer view of the economic conditions under which the artists lived and carried on their work. One close observer, Bernier, who journeyed extensively in Hindustan from A. D. 1656 to 1668, has described most graphically the state of the people at the latter end of Shah Jahan’s reign, and includes some interesting remarks on the artisans. The French physician held a good opinion of the latter, and specially ‘ admired the beauty, softness, and delicacy of their paintings and miniatures ’. But, as he points out, the excellence of their handiwork was mainly owing to the practical encouragement they received from the nobility, for ‘ the arts in the Indies would long ago have lost their beauty and delicacy, if the Monarch and principal Omrahs did not keep in their pay a number of artists who work in their houses, teach the children, and are stimulated to exertion by the hope of reward ’. Later he emphasizes this by stating that ‘ the artists, therefore, who arrive at any eminence in their art are those only who are in the service of the King or of some powerful Omrah, and who work exclusively for their patron ’. From the account thus presented it is not difficult to see the course that the craft of the painter was following. The artists by force of circumstances were gradually beginning to be resolved into two classes; in the one were a select few of outstanding ability who were servants of the court or the leading nobles, while the other comprised a larger number, not so skilled, who were endeavouring to carry on their art without such protection. This was being brought about by the fact that the conditions prevailing under Shah Jahan were very different from those under Jahangir. So enthusiastic had been the encouragement of the latter that the community of painters had increased out of all proportion. On the other hand patronage by the state and its leading officials had not expanded at the same rate, so that after Shah Jahan had ascended the throne many families of painters found themselves bereft of their accustomed means of support. These, realizing after a time that there was little prospect of the system in vogue under Akbar and Jahangir ever again being revived, fell back on the indigenous method of establishing themselves in shops in the bazaar, there to cater for a less reliable but more general demand for their handiwork. At first they formed only small isolated groups scattered among the cities and large towns of Upper India, but, as time progressed, and painting tended to become less of a princely monopoly, their pictures grew in popularity. Gradually the art began to take on a more democratic character, the number of painters increased, and so came into being a phase of painting which may most suitably be designated as ‘ commercial ’. Such a state of affairs, however, did not come all at once, only the beginning of the trade is noticeable in Shah Jahan’s time, but later it assumed considerable proportions. Of this aspect of the art as carried on in Delhi in the middle of the seventeenth century, Bernier draws a somewhat unattractive picture, and one which shows that in the process of the social and economic changes that were then taking place the painter had lost much of his prestige. He explains that the artisans were accommodated in large halls or workshops, ‘ in one hall embroiderers are busily employed, superintended by a master. In another you see the goldsmiths; in a third painters.’ But, as he goes on to explain,