Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c19.3

Language: English

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MUGHAL painting may be considered to have reached its maturity under the Emperor Jahangir. At this point in its evolution it had ceased to copy the pictures of the Persian artists, and it had also learnt to control the dictates of the indigenous mural decorator, taking only what was good from both. In a word, the two arts had become fused into one. Moreover, the painting of this time was not yet impregnated to any serious extent with the art of the West. The period thus indicated, when Mughal painting was independent of these different influences, is a narrow one. It is fairly well defined on its earlier side because it is marked by Jahangir’s personal interest in the subject, the results of which became noticeable about the year 1610. The other limit is, however, less certain. European elements began to assert themselves in many ways during this emperor’s reign, but without any serious effects on the actual character of the art. Probably with Jahangir’s failing health about the year 1625, when the vigour of his supervision declined, the end of the short period of its culmination may be recorded. There was much good work executed both before and after these dates, but the school was undoubtedly at its meridian during these fifteen years. Jahangir’s treatment of the subject differed somewhat from his father’s.

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Much of the work ordered by the latter, as shown in the previous chapter, took the form of illustrations to the Persian and Indian classics, mythical and imaginative compositions, in which the artist’s fancy played an important part. Jahangir, however, believed more in ‘the living present’, and his artists therefore were mainly employed in making realistic pictures of incidents in his daily life. Wherever he went a small staff of court painters accompanied him, ready at all times to put on record any event that pleased their sovereign’s fancy. Of these artists, however, very little is known, and this fact alone shows the difference between the state of the school under Jahangir, compared with its highly organized condition under Akbar. As we have seen, the latter ordered all the painters to be registered, numbered, and ranked with the other officials of the state. Each artist’s name was written by the court clerks on his work, and the whole movement systematized in the most efficient manner. But in Jahangir’s time things were different. The artists’ names were rarely attached to their pictures, and no list of these has been handed down to us. In his exuberance the monarch occasionally refers in his memoirs to some of the more distinguished exponents, and these are really our only guide to the leading artists of his court.

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It seems not unlikely that Jahangir’s freedom in the treatment of the school, his apparent laxity in many ways, may have led to a less restrained and broader development of the art. The painters he specially mentions are Bishandās, Farrukh Beg, Abu’l-Ḥasan, and Mansur, while two others who also executed good pictures which are known to us were Manohar and Govardhan. Additional names may be identified with the art of his time, but this brief list comprises the principal group at the court. These artists were mainly occupied in painting pictures of everyday events which were to form the illustrations to Jahangir’s memoirs. A number of copies of this autobiography were produced—we read of several being presented to different people—and no doubt most of them contained pictures. But there was one standard original, the illustrations of which were designed and executed by the leading artists, and this was kept in the imperial library of the Mughals. The pictures were not bound up with the text, but formed a separate folio or *muraqqa‘*, and from these originals duplicates were made by less accomplished artists as they were required. The emperor’s own copy has been partly destroyed and any pictures that survived have been dispersed, but sufficient are available, supplemented by copies, to reconstruct, pictorially, much of the life of this emperor and the events of his reign.

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A few of the original pictures, the majority of them unfortunately seriously abraded, have found their way into the Rampur State Library, and from these several of the less damaged have been selected, which will now be described.