Indian Painting under the Mughals, A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1750 c21.22

c21.22

On the whole, therefore, it seems that while Jahangir was interested in all those Europeans who had any knowledge of painting, and while he also unreservedly encouraged the importation of Western pictures into his dominions, even ordering his artists to make copies of them, as did his father Akbar, yet as a matter of principle he regarded the painting of his own people as a thing apart. His attitude in this connexion may be judged by the general character of the miniatures of his reign, especially those that concerned himself, in all of which occidental feeling is conspicuous by its absence. He does not appear to have approved of any deliberate combination of the two forms of expression, and, if any painter did introduce anything of the West into his picture, it was so transformed—so Indianized in the process—that any sense of incongruity which might be expected from the loan is not ordinarily felt. This does not mean that the Mughal painters did not subconsciously absorb certain occidental qualities into their work. They could not have been in close contact with the art of the West, as many of them were, without such being the case, but anything that they did accept was a matter of careful selection, and so treated that it blended naturally with their own style. It will be realized that there is no discredit in such a system provided that what the artist borrows he does not neglect to make really his own. There are many instances of great creative movements not only in art but in other spheres of culture, which have been dependent at some period of their evolution on foreign suggestion. It is true that most of them incurred the debt at the initial stage of their development, as the painting of Italy in its primitive period borrowed from Byzantine art, and Elizabethan literature drew upon the writers of Italy and France; but an interchange of knowledge and experience may be made valuable at all times and seasons. On the other hand apparent similarities, especially in the graphic arts, between the productions of two different races should not be pushed too far. There have been times when it seems as if thought-waves were permeating the art world, independent of any actual material communication. For example, there is a strange affinity between the ‘mental texture’, so to speak, of Japanese art in the fourteenth century and the art of the same period in Italy, although there could have been no real intercourse of any kind at such an early date. A further instance is that of the early Muhammadan architecture of India, which has the same rugged qualities and stern appearance as the Norman Gothic of England, while another is the resemblance between some of the ninth-century designs of Khotan and those of the Saxons. The explanation is that all these were the result of independent though similar processes of thought-evolution, and it is not improbable that much of the supposed European feeling in the painting of the Mughals is due to the same cause.