Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c21.19

c21.19

Nothing, however, that he thought would be of use to his artists in their work escaped the eye of Jahangir; and his inquiries into the art of other countries, as we have seen in his conversations with Sir Thomas Roe, were most penetrating. In the service of the ambassador was a young English factor of the name of ‘Hewes’ (‘Robert Hughes’), who was fond of sketching. The emperor heard of this, although Roe assured him that he did work ‘but very meanly, far from the arte of painting’; yet nothing would satisfy the Mughal until he had seen his sketches, and had ‘some speech’ with him. As the ambassador had warned him, the young man’s drawings were very elementary, and Jahangir apparently thought so too, because he did not ask again to see him. There are indications that the emperor would have liked to have had an English painter in his service, especially after he had seen the wonderful examples of the English school of miniaturists brought by Roe. Such a rumour no doubt prompted an adventurer at the Mughal court, an engineer of the name of Richard Steel, to arrange for one to be brought out. Steel was a native of Bristol, obviously a very plausible person, who persuaded the East India Company to engage him in a general capacity, and take out with him to India a number of workmen on the chance of his being able to interest the Mughal in his very visionary proposals. But besides the company’s work, he had also private schemes of his own, not authorized by the directors, one of which was to smuggle out an artist with the idea that by selling his pictures he might make some money, and incidentally get into closer touch with the emperor. Roe, who was already in India and engaged in the delicate task of obtaining Jahangir’s signature to his treaty, was far from pleased at such unexpected and undesirable additions to his entourage. He felt, and with some justification, that they were likely to cause complications, and did not hesitate to say so in his letters home, also reporting that Steel had brought with him ‘a Paynter named Hatfield, stole him aboard at the downes, who is bound to him for 7 years (a very good woorkeman both in lymning and oyle) to deuide profitts ’.¹ Up to a point Steel’s plan succeeded, for we read that ‘the Mogol would haue him to take his picture . . . he was admitted . . . into the Mogol’s lodgings, where he did sit for the said Limner ’.² No results, however, appear to have followed this move, as nothing more is heard of the artist whom the engineer had associated with him in his venture.