Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c16.45

c16.45

As we have seen, the disintegration of the Mughal empire brought about the dispersal of the school of painting which belonged to it, and towards the end of the eighteenth century the Mughal artists were beginning to be scattered into the furthermost parts of the peninsula. Some families still remained at the Mughal capital, not however in service, as this system was becoming a thing of the past, but as workmen in the bazaars. These were Muhammadans, and their descendants are now the modern miniature painters of Delhi, who still carry on a somewhat precarious trade in the capital of India to the present day. But many of the families of Hindus, either feeling the pressure of intoleration or the absolute necessity of patronage as an inspiration, travelled far afield in their search for sympathy and support. One group wandered east to Patna, in Behar, there to form a local style, or qalam, which was of some repute in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Others, probably an offshoot of the families who in the eighteenth century found homes in Hyderabad and Nekonda, migrated to Mysore, and even as far south as Tanjore, there to found small schools of painting which have some merit. The traditions of the Mysore painters, when they first arrived in the state, go back to the eighteenth century, but their real history begins with the first half of the nineteenth century, when they received much encouragement from an artistic ruler named Raja Krishnaraja Wodeyar. After his death in 1868 the art still lingered, but lacking support it began to decay and finally became extinct. The artists of the other southern branch of the Mughal school, who settled in Tanjore, are definitely stated to have come from Hindustan in the reign of Raja Sarabhoji towards the end of the eighteenth century. Some of these are at the present time carrying on their art in the capital of the state, and their painting, in some aspects of its technique, shows a connexion with that of the Mughals. But long before these local *qalams* had begun to develop in their provincial centres, the Mughal school had, to all intents and purposes, ceased to exist. Its death-knell was rung when the artists began to desert the Mughal capital on the decline of the court there. Pictures in the Delhi *qalam* are really the only good examples of the Mughal school, as they represent the art in its classical phase ; the remaining *qalams*, except in a few instances, depict it merely in its decay. When, owing to illness and age, the hand of the Emperor Shah Jahan began to relinquish its hold on the affairs of the empire, the art, too, had reached its first stage of dissolution. There were but few good pictures of the Mughal school of painting executed after the middle of the seventeenth century.