Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c18.4

c18.4

Such a system of production seems to suggest that the painting of Mughal pictures was more of a craft than a fine art, and that it was conducted in the following manner. The painters were assembled in a hall or workshop, and there, under a head man, each was employed in executing those parts of a picture with which he was most familiar. The actual composition, or ‘lay out’, of the miniature would be sketched in by the chief artist, which, when approved would be passed from hand to hand, one artist drawing the figures, another painting the background, a third putting in the features, and so on, until each had completed the portion of the work allotted to him and the whole was finished. It is quite possible that the method thus outlined was not altogether a device of the artists themselves, but a plan conceived by their patron in a supreme endeavour to obtain what he considered the finest results. This potentate would be quite capable of demanding that the best background painter at the court be employed on the landscape, the best portrait painter on the faces, the best animal painter on the animals, fondly believing that by such means he would get a superlative work of art. On the other hand a similar form of collaboration marks the system by which most of the craft work of India is produced, the divisions of labour being sharply defined. As an example, in the trade of the metal-worker, the *thathiyar* who hammers out the shape of the vessel is distinct from the *chataira* who repoussés the pattern with which it is decorated. In the same way the picture was arranged to be the work of a number of craftsmen, each separate individual being trained to do his own particular portion to perfection, thus taking his share in the production as the whole. It should be explained, however, that painting in this manner was in vogue only for a limited time. Although Jahangir speaks of it as if it were a common procedure, he is clearly referring to the painting of the past, for there are few signs of it in the pictures of his reign. Under Akbar for a short period it seems to have been freely practised, but only as a passing phase, probably encouraged by that monarch with the vague idea that by so doing he was improving the art and increasing the output of his school. Of the many illustrated manuscripts produced in his time, in only three, the Jaipur *Razmnāma*, the Bankipur *Timūrnāma*, and the South Kensington *Akbarnāma*, is it employed to any great extent. In the other works which have survived, occasionally two artists’ names are inscribed on the same picture, but this is the exception rather than the rule.