Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c19.3.2

c19.3.2

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.