A Mughal item from the Bodleian Library’s Love & Devotion exhibit: “The realism and brilliant colour palette are distinctly Mughal, as are the inner borders painted with botanically accurate flowers set inside gilded margins.”* (MS. Douce Or. a. 1, fols. 45b-46a)

Rachael Seculer-Faber Material Culture Essay Graduate Diploma

The Development of Mughal Miniature Painting and the Reign of the Emperor Akbar

The art of painting in India extends as far back as prehistoric times, and numerous cave paintings and murals at temples and other famous sites bear testimony to a long history of creative production. These mural paintings can be seen to have influenced a vast array of Indian painting techniques on various supports – including Thangka (scroll) paintings on silk, Tanjore & Mysore paintings on gessoed cloth, Pichhwai paintings on cloth, Batiks, Kadatas (a long sheet of cloth made from tamarind-seed powder, cured with charcoal paste), Kalamkari (textile) paintings,

paintings on wood, glass, leather, ivory and mica; and the enduringly popular format of illustrated manuscript leaves & miniatures, which have been produced across most parts of India, and from as far back as the 10th century (palm leaf), to the 12th century (paper) and through to the present day. Moreover, at the height of the miniature painting tradition, styles from Indian miniatures seem to have exerted their influence back in the other direction, upon the mural paintings of various regional schools of the period.1 This essay will focus on the miniature paintings of the Mughal School, in particular those of the Akbari period, which were largely

executed as manuscript illustrations or in the format of albums, either directly on paper or on paper-backed cloth, bound or unbound. Technical, contextual and stylistic aspects of this painting tradition will be discussed, along with their relation to other types

of art production, both within and outwith India. The Mughal era is perhaps the most interesting period in the history of painting in India, as the (ethnically Turko-Mongol) Mughal rulers – seeing Persian culture as the height of refinement – brought Persian artists and artistic styles to India, to create a merging of indigenous Indian painting styles and new influences. Mughal miniatures and illustrated manuscripts are, therefore, an extremely useful tool for looking at the interplay of India’s various different cultural and artistic traditions across time.

1* http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/whats-on/online/love-and-devotion/mughal-india Bisht

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A late 5th Century Buddhist wall painting, the Mahajanaka jataka, from Cave 1 at Ajanta

Rachael Seculer-Faber Material Culture Essay Graduate Diploma

In his work on the restoration of Indian miniature paintings, K.K. Gupta describes the technique of Indian miniature painting as being “a peculiar technique of execution...neither proper watercolour nor gouache or tempera... somewhere between these or perhaps a blend of these”2. He explains that they are made up with a layered structure, the first part of which is the ‘wasli’, or ‘paperboard’, support. The wasli consists of two

or three sheets of paper pasted together, and smoothed by burnishing after being sized in a solution of alum. In some cases, the support instead consists of a single sheet of paper strengthened by added strips of paper at the edges; if wasli is used, it may still be the case that the support is made “by skillfully joining several small pieces” or, commonly, by preparing the borders and margins from separate pieces of paper. Given that paper was

possibly not produced in India until the late 13th / early 14th century AD3, and once introduced was nevertheless a secret known only to a few families of Kagzi Muslims (the Hindu caste-system did not approve of the touching of rags), it can be surmised that these measures were designed with the goal of maximising the use of an expensive, sometimes imported (Iranian) material, by means of minimising wastage. After this support was prepared, a preliminary outline was sketched on it, and this was covered with a thin white ground of lead white, clay, or zinc white suspended in a plant gum, through which the outline would be visible. The ground was burnished, and then the outline and details drawn in with a mixture of lampblack and carmine prior to painting. It has been observed4 that pre-Mughal and early-Mughal paintings used thin layers of both ground and paint, as was common among Persian artists, but that over time Indian artists made the technique their own by using thicker layers of ground and paint, akin to indigenous mural-painting methods, as well as specifically Mughal-period choices of materials (e.g. lead white as the preferred ground). The make-up of the paint – a pigment within a 2 Gupta3 There is much debate on the matter, with some scholars proposing much earlier dates, varying between the 2nd century BC and the 10th century AD4 Bisht

2

Tutinama, f.46a. Cleveland Museum of Art 62.279.

Rachael Seculer-Faber Material Culture Essay Graduate Diploma

binding medium of babul gum, neem gum or animal glue – is also specifically Indian, and can be considered neither watercolour (it uses a larger quantity of binding medium), tempera (it is not an emulsion) nor gouache (no opacifier is added)5. Layers of paint were added one at a time and the painting burnished each time. Finally, the finishing touch of gold and silver illumination was added – using leaf in the case of larger areas, or a suspension of powder, applied with a brush, in the case of finer details.

Stylistically, the development of the Mughal School of miniature painting began during the reign of Humayun, who invited to his court two Persian artisans – Mir Saiyid ‘Ali and ‘Abd al-Samad – from the Shah’s manuscript studio at Tabriz. Their work, however, was “still almost purely Safavid in style”6 in the 1550s, and it was under the rule of Humayun’s son Akbar that a true Mughal style began to really take shape – hints of which can be seen in the Tutinama manuscript of Cleveland Museum of Art. Produced either towards the end of Humayun’s reign or at the beginning of his son’s, the Cleveland Tutinama is the earliest known manuscript to combine Safavid, Sultanate, Hindu and Jain styles, but also reflects how the painters “were to adapt their own highly idiosyncratic style to Akbar’s tastes”7. The reign of Akbar is seen by many as the height of manuscript production and decoration, and perhaps of artistic production in general, in India. Akbar, who himself enjoyed painting and saw it as a means of increasing knowledge of god8, was a great patron of the arts. His manuscript painting studio at Fatehpur Sikri numbered around one hundred and fifty artists9, whose work he inspected and rewarded on a weekly basis10.

5 Bisht; Gupta6 Roy & Losty7 Rogers8 Seyller9 Bisht10 Rogers

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Hamzanama folio IS.1516-1883, Victoria & Albert Museum

Capricorn, from the Eva and Konrad Seitz Collection of Indian Miniatures

Rachael Seculer-Faber Material Culture Essay Graduate Diploma

Of the manuscripts illustrated by his imperial studio, known as the tasvir khana, the project generally recognised as his “first and greatest”11 is the copying and illustration of the epic poem Hamzanama, believed to have been produced in at least fourteen volumes, all of an exceptionally large format (68x52cm). Each volume is thought to have contained at least a hundred illustrations – though a total of fewer than a hundred and fifty survive – and the project is said to have taken fifteen years to complete. Though certainly devised as illustrated books rather than individual studies (as later became popular, often placed in decorated albums, during the

reigns of Jahangir and Shah Jahan12), it is thought that the

volumes may have originally been unbound, and the illustrated sheets – painted on cloth with a stout paper backing – held up to accompany recitations of the epic. The Hamzanama’s style makes evident the diverse origins of its artists, whom Akbar had gathered from Iran and across the regions of India, both Muslims and Hindus. A deeply spiritual man, during the 1570s Akbar instituted religious debates and discussions at his court, inviting Sufi, Hindu, Jain, Zoroastrian and Jesuit (Portuguese Goan) scholars. He was dedicated to creating a harmonious empire in which “practitioners of various sects and beliefs, both true and imperfect” could live together in peace – as we can learn from the memoirs of his son Jahangir13 – and the makeup of the imperial court, from the ruling elite to the various ranks of artisans, reflects this intent, with Turko-Mongols, Persians, Indian-born Muslims and Hindus holding equal status.

Thus, the Safavid Persian-style miniatures of the beginning of Akbar’s reign – of vertical format, in a flat, two-dimensional style (but with “clearly legible” spatial relationships), with profuse floral and geometric decoration, with soft, shimmering background colours, with small figures who are treated almost as ‘decorative ornaments’ themselves, and an overall composition in which no one

11 Rogers12 The Nehru Gallery, Victoria & Albert Museum13 Seyller

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Portrait of the Aged Akbar, Cleveland Museum of Art (Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund 1971.78)

Rachael Seculer-Faber Material Culture Essay Graduate Diploma

element stands out more than others – came to contain Hindu influences, namely large, expressive figures; bold, unmodulated background colours; a focus on a central scene and all its drama – as well as elements from the European tradition, in the form of naturalistically drawn and modelled figures, techniques of shading, a certain sense of spatial depth, and elements of symbolism.14 It is thought that medieval-period Jain manuscripts and classical-period Buddhist paintings (such as the Ajanta cave paintings, as pictured above) also played their part in the development of the Mughal style, in terms of the use of multiple perspective, the modelling of features such as eyes and arms, and other aspects.15 It has been shown to be the case that this mixed-influence style developed fairly quickly, with the tasvir khana’s original artists, trained in the Persian, Sultanate, Jain and Rajput traditions, immediately taking on elements of each other’s styles (even the work of Humayun’s two Persian masters shows the adoption of “native traits of Indian art”)16 – rather than it being the case that this only took place within the second generation of artists, trained by this eclectic mix of masters. Moreover, Persian influence in Indian painting was not a new phenomenon with the Mughals but had made its mark on western Indian painting since the 1450s.17 This merging of influences did not happen all at once, therefore, but before, during and after the time of Akbar’s first batch of court artists. Over time, some of the elements present in early Mughal painting disappeared or became less common, including the bold colour palette, the use of intricately patterned backgrounds, and the sole focus on the central theme; this resulted in the creation of miniatures such as the Capricorn painting shown above, which is strongly influenced by European naturalism, symbolism and even architecture.18

Akbar’s religious policy was one of the central motivations to his patronage of miniature painting, alongside the other, more established purposes of Islamic book production, namely glorifying Allah’s creation and illustrating the wealth and sophistication of the patron. Under Akbar, “for the first time in the Islamic world, painting was used systematically and effectively to propagate the political goals of the ruler”19. On one hand, this consisted of the production

14 Seyller15 Hajek16 Verma17 Verma18 Seyller19 Seyller

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The man carried away by the Simurgh, British Library Or.12208 f.195a. From a 1595-6 copy of the Khamsa of Nizami

Rachael Seculer-Faber Material Culture Essay Graduate Diploma

of books containing Hindu epics translated into Persian, which the Emperor hoped would increase understanding and tolerance between his fellow Turko-Mongols and India’s native Hindus.20 On the other hand, illustrated book production was a means of displaying the glory and the legitimacy of Mughal rule, by producing histories of the reigns of Akbar and of his ancestors.21 Moreover, it was a means of promoting within the imperial court the eclectic Din-i Ilahi form of worship that Akbar had established, which focussed on light and the sun, and on the Emperor as an embodiment of this divine light – supposedly passed down from his ancestor Queen Alanquwa, who had been impregnated by a ray of divine light. Thus, illustrations of the Virgin Mary were produced, in order to remind the viewer of Alanquwa and her distinguished Timurid dynasty, which had reached its divine zenith in the form of Akbar.22 The halo, also adopted from Christian art, was another, even more direct way of implying imperial divinity, as in the above image of Akbar from the reign of his grandson Shah Jahan (1640-50).

But it seems that manuscript illustration was to Akbar not merely a form of imperial propaganda but held for him a truly meaningful religious significance. Traditional Persian painting’s way of glorifying god was to create a fantasy world which reflected god’s glory in its idyllic intricacy and peaceful atmosphere. Over time, Akbari painting’s way of glorifying god came to be the depiction of the natural world in all its realism and naturalistic beauty, along with (Christian–inspired) elements of symbolism23. As the book published to accompany the British Library’s Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire exhibition states, “The realization that his own artists, who for forty years had been advancing towards the naturalistic representation of the real world, had now reached the point where they could make recognizable portraits of real people must have struck Akbar with amazing force.”24 Yet if we take as fact a quote attributed to Akbar postulating that painting provides a “means of recognising God” since the painter attempting to portray living beings “must come to feel

20 Roy & Losty21 Seyller22 Seyller23 Seyller24 Roy & Losty

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A page from the Akbarnama, the official chronicle of Akbar’s reign. Victoria & Albert Museum IS.2:24-1896

Rachael Seculer-Faber Material Culture Essay Graduate Diploma

that he cannot bestow originality upon his work, and is thus forced to think of God”25, this development of this skill among his artists must have done more than merely impress the Emperor, but also alter dramatically his religious connection to miniature painting; it was now recognised that it was the painter’s ability to accurately portray the natural world – not his inability to do so – that caused the artist and viewer to contemplate God’s glories, and painting to constitute a religious experience.

After the time of Akbar, Mughal miniature painting continued to evolve. His son Jahangir involved himself deeply with the work of the

imperial artists, visiting the atelier daily, and the realistic naturalism and skill at portraiture developed during Akbar’s reign became the central features of the later period’s style. As previously mentioned, a shift took place from the illustration of texts to the production of individual images or albums thereof. Jahangir’s preferences also led to a paring down of the number of imperial artists and their previously vast output, which enabled “exacting standards of artistry” to be set for all the work produced by the atelier, rather than a mixture of exceptional-quality, slow-paced work and lower-quality, more immediate work, as had been the case under Akbar. After Jahangir and Shah Jahan, Indian miniature

painting went through a period of neglect under the orthodox Islamic Emperor Aurungzeb, and though it experienced

later bursts of productivity, such as the so called ‘Company school’ under the British Raj, producing artworks for British members of the East India Company26, and the revival of traditional Indian miniature techniques attempted in recent years27, no period of Indian miniature painting before or after has been as enormously productive, varied, vibrant, dynamic, receptive of influences and religiously and politically meaningful as under Akbar, whose reign can therefore be considered the height of Indian miniature painting.

25 Verma26 Nationalistic-seeming Indian scholars (e.g. A.S. Bisht) argue that Indian painting styles were largely unaffected by western influence under the Raj, with only the reverse happening, yet other sources (e.g. The Encyclopedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/129596/Company-school) argue that these works were in fact very much influenced by British tastes.

27 Although this has had some success, according to A.S. Bisht a side-effect of this revival in skill has been that many well-painted copies – almost indistinguishable from the historical originals – have entered the market as antiquities.

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Rachael Seculer-Faber Material Culture Essay Graduate Diploma

Works Cited

BISHT, A.S., 2008. Conservation of Indian miniatures and illustrated manuscripts. New Delhi: Om Publications.

GUPTA, K.K., 2006. Restoration of Indian miniature paintings. New Delhi: Northern Book Centre : National Museum Institute.

HAJEK, L., FORMAN, W., & FORMAN, B. (1960). Indian miniatures of the Moghul school. London, Spring Books.

LOSTY, J.P., ROY, M., 2012. Mughal India : art, culture and empire : manuscripts and paintings in the British Library. London: British Library.

ROGERS, J.M., 2006. Mughal miniatures. London: British Museum Press.

SEYLLER, J.W. and SEITZ, K., 2010. Mughal and Deccani paintings : Eva and Konrad Seitz collection of Indian miniatures. Zürich: Museum Rietberg.

VERMA, S.P., 2009. Interpreting Mughal painting : essays on art, society, and culture. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Exhibitions visited

- The Nehru Gallery of South Asian Art (The Victoria and Albert Museum)

- Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire (The British Library)(& the Exhibition Blog at http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/asian-and-african/2013/01/art-of-painting.html)

- Love and Devotion: From Persia and Beyond (The Bodleian Library)(& the Online Exhibition at http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/whats-on/online/love-and-devotion/mughal-india)

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