A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c20.s3: Section III. Criticism
A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c20.s3
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Section III. Criticism
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The roots of Indo-Persian, as of every form of art, go down deep into the remote past and ramify in various directions. Through Persia we can trace them into Russian Turkistan, or Transoxiana, Mesopotamia, and China; in India they draw nourishment from the soil of Hindu tradition, and to a lesser extent from that of European artistic teaching. Essentially the Indo-Persian drawings are a branch of Asiatic art, to be judged by the canons of that art, and not according to the standard fixed by the Renaissance masters; or as a French critic expresses himself, the student 'must throw over his artistic education, every critical tradition, and all the aesthetic baggage that has accumulated from the Renaissance to our own days'. To complain of the inattention to modern rules of perspective, of the lack of light and shade effects, of atmosphere, &c., is to start criticism from a wrong basis.¹ Such things concern the conventions of art, that is to say, the understood agreement between the draughtsman and the beholder as to the way in which solid forms should be represented on a sheet of paper. When we look at a Chinese picture we must be content to find distant objects at the top, and not at the points where they would be placed by European perspective science; but as artistic a picture may be made with one system for expressing distance as with another, provided both parties concerned, the artist and the spectator, are in agreement. We are not entitled to say that a Chinese picture is no good merely because the distant objects are at the top.¹
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¹ ^1 See *Indian Art at Delhi*, p. 455, for such criticism.
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¹ Bushell, *Chinese Art*, ii. 110.
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Similarly, we find Basāwan (*ante*, p. 470, Plate CXVII) arranging his substitute for perspective in a different fashion, after the manner of the old Hindu bas-reliefs; and, in order to understand his meaning, we have to imagine that objects, such as people and trees, laid down at length in the picture are set up on their feet. When we mentally view them as so set up, they come into proper relation one to the other. The Indo-Persian pictures, if closely studied for the purpose, would be found to use several methods for the expression of distance—Indian, Chinese, and European.
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Certain examples of Indo-Persian art, not by any means the best, such as Plate CXVI, *ante*, have been so much affected by the study of European models that they may be judged fairly as being more or less successful imitations of Italian or French pictures; but the really first-class work, which was little if at all influenced by Renaissance teaching, must be criticized as Asiatic not as European art; and, if it is to be compared with the work of other schools, the comparison should be made with those of Asia, not of Europe.
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The leading technical merit of the best Mughal drawings, whether mere outline sketches, or elaborately coloured and gilt pictures, is the unsurpassed mastery over line displayed by the artists. All Asiatic pictorial art relies on the treatment of lines for its effects, and not on the more complex combinations of the modern European painter. Mr. Havell justly observes that 'the Mogul artist, with his brush, could draw lines with the delicacy and firmness of the etcher's needle-point'; and that 'the wonderful distinction, delicacy, and charm—and withal masterful strength—of the drawings . . . gives them all the strength of finished cameos'.² Almost any example of the good period will justify those observations. All fair criticism of the Mughal, or Indo-Persian, work must start from the fact that every picture, however gorgeous it may be, is essentially a line drawing, based on a firmly sketched outline. Sometimes the outline was never filled in, and certain compositions in that kind, although exceedingly slight in substance, are among the most charming. When the pernicious practice of dividing the work on one small picture between several collaborators was adopted, it is only the outline draughtsman who can claim credit as an original artist. Mere filling in with colours and gold, however well done, is the business of a skilled artisan rather than of a true artist.
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² *Indian Sculpture and Painting*, p. 208.
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The practice referred to tended, as already observed (*ante*, p. 462), to degrade fine art into a craft, and it is impossible to study large numbers of the Indo-Persian pictures without feeling that many of them are the productions of highly-trained and dexterous craftsmen rather than the creations of artists striving to express ideas in the language of line and colour. The constant exhibition of the 'very Indian qualities of infinite patience and perfect self-control' manifested in the absolutely faultless execution of the most minute details, often so minute as to need examination under a magnifying-glass, cannot fail to impress the most casual observer. It is well that an artist should be gifted with the manual dexterity and fine eye-sight which enable him to draw the individual hairs of a fakīr's beard accurately with a single-hair brush, but such gifts are apt to prove a snare. The excessive regard of the Mughal artists for meticulous fineness of execution sometimes tempted them to neglect the weightier matters of true art. No skill of hand or keenness of vision can make up for lack of ideas. A mere transcript of the external facts of court ceremonial, when unrelieved by any effort to express thought, becomes as wearisome as the ceremonial itself to an intelligent observer.
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But, although some of the Indo-Persian court paintings may be reproached as being highly-finished mechanical decorative designs rather than speaking works of art, the school produced many pictures entitled to high rank as truly artistic expressions of ideas. The perfect representations of animals and plants may be traced back to two principal sources, Indian and Chinese. The birds, palms, frogs, &c. in Basāwan's picture (*ante*, Pl. CXVII) may be truly described as inspired by the spirit of the Ajaṇṭā artists, while the elaborate ‘portraits’ of individual animals, like Mansūr's wonderful turkey-cock, are more Chinese than Indian. The horses, I think, mostly recall the Persian style. The elephants (*ante*, p. 484), of course, are Indian, and we need not doubt that throughout the ages there were always Indians who could draw elephants well.
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Nevertheless, while agreeing that the Indo-Persian animals and plants deserve high praise, I am not quite prepared to accept Mr. Havell's doctrine that—
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‘the Mogul school, though naturalistically inclined, has this in common with the idealistic art of the Buddhist and Brahmanical epochs, that it always kept in view the highest aim of the artist—to penetrate into the soul of things and to bring us into closer relation with Nature's eternal verities.’ ¹
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¹ *Indian Sculpture and Painting*, p. 237.
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On the contrary, it seems to me that the Indo-Persian artists troubled themselves little about either ‘the soul of things’ or ‘Nature's eternal verities’. Theirs was a courtier's art, initiated and cultivated for the delectation of luxurious kings and nobles, and well adapted to adorn the walls of palaces, or to be handed round for the entertainment of connoisseur parties. The subjects chosen, excepting deliberate imitations of foreign pictures, ordinarily were portraits of princes and courtiers, scenes of palace life and aristocratic amusement, or lively delineations of favourite chargers and elephants or strange and interesting creatures. In the earlier days of the school, Indian-born artists followed Mongol fashions and painted sanguinary battle-scenes, executions, and so forth; but during the best period the life portrayed is, as a rule, that of courtly luxury. When groups of fakīrs or other poor folk are introduced they are treated either as mere accessories, or in a dilettante spirit as objects of curiosity.
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The art may be fairly described as purely secular, chiefly concerned with the pomps and vanities of the life of the rich, and occasionally venturing into the land of romance. There is hardly a trace of religious sentiment, unless it is to be detected in the occasional sympathetic delineation of a grave and revered ‘mullah’. But even the holy men are caricatured occasionally. In some of the Ibrāhīm-bin-Adham pictures, miscalled ‘Angels ministering unto Christ’ (*ante*, p. 464), the leading idea seems to be mockery of the ‘Disgusted Darvīsh’. The Fathpur-Sīkrī frescoes, although in some cases dealing with religious subjects, were treated as means of decoration rather than as works of piety.
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The special glory of the Indo-Persian school, distinguishing it above all other schools of Asiatic art, is its high attainment in portraiture. The artists, whether Hindu or Muslim by birth, freed themselves completely from the Hindu disinclination to or aversion from realistic likenesses, and produced scores of portraits, some mere sketches, others highly-finished pictures, which may fairly claim to rank as the equals in merit to the finest European miniatures, although utterly different in technique. M. Blochet justly describes the best Indo-Persian portraits as ‘genuine marvels’ and ‘inimitable models’. Compared with European oil paintings they are always small in scale, often tiny, and seldom more than a few inches square. The illustrations in this chapter and in Mr. Havell’s book dispense with the necessity for elaborate descriptive criticism. Anybody can perceive the high quality of the choicest examples, and agree in appreciating their accurate drawing, harmonious colouring, and truthfulness of expression.
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Indian artists never acquired the Chinese passionate love of landscape for its own sake (*ante*, p. 450). To them the scenery was of interest only in its relation to human beings as a background on which to exhibit the actions of men and women. At first they were content with the purely conventional scenery of the Persian school, but the later painters, obviously under the influence of European example, attempted, and sometimes with considerable success, to treat the background as a subject of more or less independent interest, and to paint elaborate scenes filled with hills, streams, and buildings treated in a realistic way. But the result of such a combination of European and Asiatic practice has never been quite satisfactory.
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The changes in style from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century are well marked. The early book illustrations of Akbar’s reign dealing with subjects similar to those usually treated in Persia are simply imitations of Persian work, and by no means equal to the models. Mr. Havell, a critic inclined to be indulgent to all Indian productions, while admiring the delicate execution of the pictures in the Clarke MS. of the *Akbarnāmah*, is constrained to admit that ‘in most of them, not excluding those with Basāwan’s signature, the colouring is heavy, sometimes even crude, the action of the figures is generally stiff and unnatural, and the composition without any distinction of style’. I am not disposed to dispute the correctness of that judgement. But the same artists when they proceeded to deal with Hindu legends or romantic subjects, under less constraint from the obligation to follow Persian precedent, used their powers with greater freedom and more originality. During Jahāngīr’s reign much of the stiffness disappeared, and the crudity of colouring began to be softened, but critics are generally agreed that the best work falls within the limits of the reign of Shahjahān (1627-58). In later times the old rigidity of drawing and crudity of colour reappeared.
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On the whole, study of a multitude of examples of the outturn of the Indo-Persian or Mughal school leaves the impression on my mind that its place in the art history of the world is that of a minor, not a major art. The best examples are charming, pretty, graceful, and so forth, but lack greatness. They are all too small to possess the dignity and breadth of large pictures, while they rarely display much imaginative power, and never, or hardly ever, any serious religious emotion. The portraits undoubtedly are perfect in their way, and probably superior to anything of the kind elsewhere in Asia, but the rest of the work of the school falls far below the level of the best Chinese and Japanese painting in poetical expression of emotion and subtle suggestion of things unexpressed.
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This chapter is the first attempt to give a systematic account of the Mughal or Indo-Persian school.
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The following works supply useful information.
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BLOCHET, E.—‘Inventaire et Description des Miniatures des Manuscrits conservés à la Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris’ (*Revue des Bibliothèques*, Paris, 1898–1900); ‘Musalman MSS. and Miniatures as illustrated in the recent Exhibition at Paris’ (*Burlington Magazine*, 1903); ‘Les Origines de la Peinture en Perse’ (*Gazette des Beaux-Arts*, Aug. 1905). All valuable publications. HAVELL, E. B.—*Indian Sculpture and Painting* (London, 1908). Excellent reproductions, and valuable criticism, but excessively laudatory.
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HUART.—*Les Calligraphes et les Miniaturistes de l'Orient Musulman*, Paris, 1908. MIGEON, GASTON.—*Manuel d'art musulman*, tome ii (Paris, 1907). Valuable for art of Persia, &c., slight and not altogether accurate in treatment of Indian art.¹ MIGEON, BARCHAM, HUART.—*Portfolio de l'Exposition des Arts Musulmans* (Paris, 1903), with good reproductions. *B. M. Catalogue of Persian MSS.*: *Catalogue of Hindustani, &c., MSS.*, with brief notices of the paintings. *Guide to the Lahore Museum*, 1908; *Catalogue of the Delhi Museum*, 1908; *Catalogue of the Victoria Memorial Collection*, Calcutta.
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¹ Serious errors and misprints disfigure Chapter vii, ‘Les Civilisations musulmanes dans l’Inde,’ the worst being the statement on p. lxxxiii:—‘Mais es Marathas Hindus, dont la force s’était accrue au milieu de toutes ces divisions, écrasent Mogols et Persans à la bataille de Panipat en 1761. C’était à tout jamais la fin de la domination islamique dans l’Inde.’ Of course, the fact is that the Marāthā army was ruinously defeated by Ahmad Shah Durrānī.
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Other references in footnotes.