A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c20.s1.62

c20.s1.62

Excepting the modern Delhi miniatures on ivory, the frescoes, the early paintings on cotton, and a few pictures on vellum, the Indo-Persian paintings are all executed on paper.¹ I do not know any Indian examples of painting on silk in the Chinese manner. The Indo-Persian, like other Asiatic artists, conceived every object as being bounded by firm lines, and consequently, his first step was the drawing of an outline. For the illustration of ordinary Persian books, according to M. Blochet, the outline drawn directly on the page in red or black chalk was filled in with colours at once. For more costly and elaborate volumes the process was more complicated, the illustrations being executed upon a separate sheet subsequently applied to the blank space left in the manuscript. That sheet was first covered with a layer of very fine plaster, mixed in a solution of gum arabic. The outline was then drawn upon the perfectly smooth surface thus obtained, and opaque body-colours, mixed with water, were laid on in successive layers, just as in oil-painting, but with the difference that mistakes could not be rectified. Jewels and ornaments were indicated by needle prickings in sheets of gold-leaf, or even by the insertion of pearls or diamond chips.² The work PLATE CXIV. Wall-painting: eight men in a boat; in Akbar's bedroom, Fathpur-Sīkrī. (E. W. Smith, *The Moghul Architecture of Fathpur-Sīkrī*, Pl. XIII.)