A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c20.s3.9

c20.s3.9

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.