Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c20.21

c20.21

Apart from the sureness of touch which characterizes these sketches, one is at once struck with the very detailed description of the folds of the turban. An artist will understand his reasons. The test of a finished portrait lies in the manner in which the head-dress is depicted, the actual binding on of the turban meaning so much to the Indian mind. Only those artists who have lived in the East can appreciate Babur’s care on such a point; it was as if he were writing the particulars for the use of a portrait painter. Babur, however, appears to have had a very fair opinion of his own skill as a delineator of facial character, for his one recorded remark regarding painting takes the form of a criticism of the portraiture of the famous artist Bihzad. While giving the Persian master credit for being the most eminent of all limners and ‘a very elegant painter’, he adds, in rather a superior manner, ‘but he did not draw young beardless faces well. He made the neck too large. Bearded faces he painted extremely well.’¹ The gift of graphic narration—impressions in a few short sentences—like the strokes of a brush—was hereditary with the Mughals, as may be seen in Jahangir’s pen-portrait of his father Akbar. ‘He was of the hue of wheat; and his complexion rather dark than fair; he was lion bodied, with a broad chest, and his hands and arms were long. On the left side of his nose he had a fleshy mole, very agreeable in appearance, of the size of half a pea.’ Compared with Tom Coryate’s ill-defined picture of Jahangir himself, the difference in the power of description between the two becomes at once apparent. ‘He is’, writes this eccentric traveller, ‘of seemly composition of body, of a stature little unequal (as I guess not without grounds of probability) to mine, but much more corpulent than myself.’ Such a vague attempt at delineation proclaims at once that the Mughal had cer- [Figure: LII. Faqirs resting under trees; painted c. A.D. 1650 Collection of Baron Maurice Rothschild, Paris.]