Scholars have recently made great progress in sorting out various strands of the web of interconnections among Persianate albums of paintings and calligraphy assembled in mid and late eighteenth-century India. Building on the work of Ernst Kühnel, Linda Leach, and Malini Roy, and informed by my own research in seventeenth-century Mughal painting, I offer here some fresh insights on the creative process of Mihr Chand, whose oeuvre is well represented in these albums.
Active from the mid 1740s to 1786, Mihr Chand was the most prolific and best-documented Mughal painter of the age. Ample visual and literary evidence establish his longstanding association with Emperor Muhammad Shah (r. 1719â1748), the nawab of Awadh, ShujaÊ¿ al-Dawla (r. 1754â1775), his successor Asaf al-Dawla (r. 1775â1797), and the Swiss engineer and colonel Antoine Polier (1741â1795), all major patrons at Delhi, Lucknow, and Faizabad, the one-time capital of Awadh (modern-day Uttar Pradesh). Mihr Chand is known best for paintings done in an updated realist manner that sporadically drew inspiration from European art and incorporated nominally more illusionistic effects; these include hard and dark edges on most figures and objects, discrete shadows limited arbitrarily to certain parts of the composition, the addition of colour tinting to essentially linear forms, and deep pictorial space receding to a low horizon.
I will concentrate on a less well-documented aspect of his oeuvre, that is, paintings made as close imitations or inventive recombinations of passages taken from particular works done in a wide range of earlier Indian styles, mostly seventeenth-century Mughal, but quite astonishingly, even the occasional Bijapuri and Rajasthani example.1 As I will show, some of Mihr Chandâs efforts so convincingly approximate their models that they have passed for Mughal works made a century or two earlier. This is not true of any other eighteenth-century Mughal artist, including Mihr Chandâs precursors Hunhar II, Ganga Ram, and Mir Kalan Khan from the 1730s through the 1750s, and his contemporaries Ram Sahai and Bahadur Singh from the 1770s and 1780s.2 In a few cases, we can corroborate Mihr Chandâs authorship by pinpointing the circumstances that made specific historical paintings available to him for copying. More often, we must take the extensive and indisputable visual referencing in his adaptations as evidence that he practiced this historicising manner even at times and places unrecognised in current scholarship.
A benchmark of Mihr Chandâs skill is his ascribed equestrian portrait of Shayista Khan (1600â1694), a literal copy of a work by Ilyas Khan (later known as Ilyas Bahadur), a major Mughal painter active over the last four decades of the seventeenth century (figs. 13.1â13.2).3 Mihr Chand must have used his social connections in Awadh to the French military advisor/collector Colonel Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gentil (1726â1799), who once owned Ilyas Khanâs version of the Shayista Khan portrait (fig. 13.2), to make a firsthand study and probably a tracing of the model, which have practically identical dimensions.4
Figure 13.1
Shayista Khan, ascribed Ê¿amal-i (work of) Mihr Chand, son of Ganga Ram, Faizabad, c. 1765â1773
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst, I. 4594, fol. 21r
Figure 13.2
Shayista Khan, ascribed to Ilyas Khan, Delhi, c. 1666
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, Estampes, Réserve Od 43 pet. fol., fol. 28r
Mihr Chand deviates only slightly from Ilyas Khanâs portrait of Shayista Khan astride a rearing horse, adding only the bow that is curiously absent in the original, and eliminating a single minuscule detailâships plying the inlet before the fortress of Chittagong. He maintains the grisaille manner of Ilyas Khanâs painting, but spoils it a bit with a more liberal application of colour tints. The most obvious of these infusions of colour comes in the cheery blue sky with ominous black clouds, but there are others as well, notably among the legions huddled on the right, and in the dark green shrubs along the ridge on the left and in the foreground. The bodies and faces of individual horsemen are also delineated far more explicitly, which diminishes the sense of massed figures and pictorial depth that Ilyas Khan had adapted from a European engraving.
A predilection for heightened tonal contrasts runs throughout Mihr Chandâs work. Although he tempers that tendency in this painting, he introduces unduly dark accents in the horseâs mane, forelegs, and muscles, as well as in the bare branches of the tiny tree in the lower centre. Almost any one of Mihr Chandâs contemporaries would normally be content to render the riderâs gauzy, nearly translucent white jÄma as a flat, opaque robe. Mihr Chand, by contrast, is assured enough to attempt to match the finesse of Ilyas Khan, ironically even pressing the point beyond what the seventeenth-century master himself had ventured. The result comes up short in several ways. He makes the pÄyjÄma an unsaturated olive green and then paints over it with both a milky white wash and a series of heavier white streaks, conspicuously making the underlying green clothing partially visible well up the figureâs thigh. Folds at the waist and cuff have been sharpened and darkened schematically. The modelling of Shayista Khanâs face, too, has more abrupt transitions from highlights to shadows. Finally, Mihr Chand extends and darkens the shaded areas beneath the horse, an expression of his perennial preoccupation with shadows. This close comparison provides a convenient checklist of diagnostic features that can help us recognise Mihr Chandâs work in paintings and drawings that have neither written documentation of authorship nor any known sixteenth- or seventeenth-century Mughal model.
It is productive to apply this level of scrutiny to a drawing recording the surrender of Rana Amar Singh, the ruler of the Rajput state of Mewar (r. 1597â1620) in February 1615 to Prince Khurram (the future emperor Shah Jahan), head of Mughal forces near Udaipur (fig. 13.3). The drawing has elicited two different art historical analyses to date. The first, by Linda Leach, understands it as a nearly contemporary (c. 1660) copy made after the right half of a double-page composition illustrating the same event in the PÄdshÄhnÄma, which is dated to about 1640 (fig. 13.4).5
Leach notes the careless nature of the copy that saw sporadic changes to the faces and poses of key figures, and mentions the indebtedness of the PÄdshÄhnÄma illustration in turn to an earlier version from the dispersed JahÄngÄ«rnÄma.6 A fuller second analysis by Elaine Wright situates the drawing (fig. 13.3) as an intermediate work between the other two versions, acknowledging the differences between the drawing and the PÄdshÄhnÄma painting by describing the former as a preparatory study for yet a third painted version of the scene, presumed to be lost. She dates the drawing to c. 1629, largely on the basis of the less prestigious position occupied by Afzal Khan (d. 1638), who was elevated to the higher-ranking post of DÄ«wÄn (Finance Minister) in that year and here switches positions with Raja Bikramajit just to the right of the footstool below Prince Khurram.7 Both analyses dwell on the subject of the image; neither pays much attention to the actual style of the drawing, though Wright alludes to its high finish.
Figure 13.3
Rana Amar Singh of Mewar submits to Prince Khurram in February 1615, attributed to Mihr Chand, Faizabad or Lucknow, c. 1765â1775
Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 60.6
Figure 13.4
Rana Amar Singh submits to Prince Khurram in February 1615, ascribed Ê¿amal-i (work of) LaÊ¿lchand, Mughal court, c. 1640, PÄdshÄhnÄma, fol. 46v
Royal Collection Trust, Royal Library, Windsor, RCINÂ 1005025
Tracking the many changes from the PÄdshÄhnÄma illustration (fig. 13.4) to the drawing (fig. 13.3) demonstrates that neither scenario adequately explains the idiosyncratic features of the latter. Many subgroups of Prince Khurramâs entourage have been reconfigured, mostly to ill effect, and a detail as minor as the bag of swords held by one attendant has been shifted arbitrarily from the far side of his body to an obtrusive full view on the near side. The height, curve, and length of the tent wall in the foreground have been reduced to accentuate three retainers, including one who disarmingly stares outward at the viewer. The groom is now seen directly from the back, his face averted and the lappets of his jÄma fluttering inexplicably; he also gesticulates freely, a lively element out of place in Mughal representations of formal occasions. It is no coincidence that this newly invented figure presented a significant technical challenge to the artist, who covered over his faulty renderings of turban, sword, and sashes with a thin application of white paint before he produced corrected versions of their details. In a surprisingly unwarranted departure from the PÄdshÄhnÄma model, the artist interpolates into his copy two figures from the JahÄngÄ«rnÄma painting: the self-portrait of the artist Nanha (act. c. 1580âc. 1620) seated on the right with painting board in hand, and the youth in three-quarter view now holding a peacock-feather morchhal behind the throne cushion.
There are also some curious visual lapses that are out of keeping with any preparatory study developed to this degree. The painter dispenses with most of the back part of Khurramâs throne along with its customary cushion, and leaves out the enclosing tent wall to the rear. He forgoes even a suggestion of decorative patterns save for the stripes on two figuresâ pÄyjÄmas, and eliminates the broad carpet before Amar Singh, thereby creating an awkward void in the centre of the composition. And he adds colour tintsâgold and two shades of redâto arbitrarily chosen details in a manner that would be completely abnormal in seventeenth-century Mughal drawing. An equally anachronistic tell is the introduction of tonal shading to figuresâ arms, shoulders, and torsos. This effect ripples throughout the composition, but is especially noticeable in the figures of Khurram, Amar Singh, and Ê¿Abdullah Khan, who lays his hands reassuringly on the ranaâs back. A discreet puddle of shadow around the feet of two figures standing in the area above the horseâs saddle is final evidence that this drawing must be an eighteenth-century pastiche of two earlier illustrations of the same historical event.
That Figure 13.3 simulates Jahangir- and Shah Jahan-period painting well enough to have passed among scholars as a work of those periods speaks to the artistâs exceptional facility as a draughtsman and painter. That this particular work is closely derived from two specific examples from the dispersed JahÄngÄ«rnÄma and the PÄdshÄhnÄma manuscriptâthe latter certainly in the collection of the Awadhi ruler Asaf al-Dawla, as is known from the presence of his seal on every folio, the former now presumably soâspeaks to the remarkable artistic context that enabled the artist to draw both inspiration and concrete compositions and motifs from the broad spectrum of imperial models made available to him. The confluence of this unique set of personal and circumstantial factors points inexorably to Mihr Chand as the artist of this work, a conclusion supported by the similarity of such details as the faces of Amar Singh here and Shayista Khan in his equestrian portrait (fig. 13.1).
Deepening familiarity with the many idiosyncrasies of Mihr Chandâs adaptations of Shah Jahan-period painting led me to re-examine other paintings with some of these characteristics. Two paintings in the St Petersburg Album of dervishes dancing ecstatically before Shah Jahan (r. 1627â1658) and Jahangir (r. 1605â1627), respectively, had been assigned unconvincingly to the mid seventeenth century by Stuart Cary Welch (figs. 13.5â13.6). The occasion on which Jahangir was honoured by the activities of a samaÊ¿ (spiritual concert) outside the Tomb of Akbar at Sikandra is described in Jahangirâs own words in his entry in the TÅ«zuk-i JahÄngÄ«rÄ« (Memoirs of Jahangir) for the date of the first of Aban regnal year 14 (14 October 1619), an identification corroborated by that mausoleum in the background.8 Figure 13.6 has been hypothesised to be modelled after a lost painting intended for a never-realised illustrated copy of the JahÄngÄ«rnÄma. Naturally, no such connection can be proposed for the similar companion piece (fig. 13.5), which features an elderly Emperor Shah Jahan presiding over another exuberant spectacle of public piety that took the form of Qurʾanic recitations, mystical chanting, and rapturous dance by Sufis outfitted in ritually prescribed long-sleeved robes.
The art historical genesis of both these paintings is, however, far more tortuous than a simple replication of a hypothetical lost model, and holds major implications for an understanding of Mihr Chandâs working methods. I began my study of Figure 13.5 by trying to decipher six tiny inscriptions scrawled on it. One that was legible even in reproduction was the label for JaÊ¿far Khan (d. 1670), the figure in a narrow-striped jÄma standing opposite the enthroned sovereign. Several other cursorily written labelsâespecially the one for Hayat Khan (d. 1658), the figure in orange plying a flywhiskâcould also be teased out over time. But this painstaking process took an exciting turn when I focused on a meandering verbal form in an apparently insignificant place in the lower right of the composition, that is, well below a clerical dancer and left of a simple candle. Written in ink not nearly so black as the other inscriptions and comprising basic letter shapes that lack dots altogether, it has proven to be the signature of Mihr Chand, with the two parts of his name stacked on top of each other and connected by an unusually fluid ligature. Some colleagues initially expressed skepticism that it was a signature or even a word, but the reading of this otherwise inexplicable form as Mihr Chandâs signature was confirmed by Wheeler Thackston. This signature, probably deliberately disguised by its unorthodox form and casual placement, differs from the plentiful examples of formulaic ascriptions or âsignaturesâ on Mihr Chandâs paintings, which are typically clearly written and obviously placed, almost always begin with the word Ê¿amal-i (work of) and end with a statement of the artistâs patrimony.9 The occurrence on Mihr Chandâs newly discovered signature here supports the attribution of the companion piece (fig. 13.6) and others in its vein to this artist, whose cleverness becomes more apparent with each new work.
Figure 13.5
Dervishes dancing before Shah Jahan and attendants, signed by Mihr Chand on the lower right of the painting field, Delhi, c. 1745. Museum of the History of Religion, St Petersburg Album, fol. 14r (after Elena Kostiukovitch [ed.]: The St. Petersburg Muraqqaʿ: Album of Indian and Persian Miniatures from the 16th through the 18th Century and Specimens of Persian Calligraphy by ʿImad al-Hasani, Milan: Leonardo Arte, 1996, pl. 199)
Figure 13.6
Dervishes dancing before Jahangir, attributed to Mihr Chand, Delhi, c. 1745, St Petersburg Album, fol. 28r. Museum of the History of Religion, St Petersburg. (after Elena Kostiukovitch (ed.): The St. Petersburg Muraqqaʿ: Album of Indian and Persian Miniatures from the 16th through the 18th Century and Specimens of Persian Calligraphy by ʿImad al-Hasani, Milan: Leonardo Arte, 1996, pl. 198)
Given Mihr Chandâs propensity to adapt earlier works of Mughal art in part or whole, it is no surprise that a number of passages in both Figure 13.5 and Figure 13.6 are lifted directly from other paintings in the St Petersburg Album. The figure of Shah Jahan, for example, is copied quite blatantly from another painting in the St Petersburg Album, which depicts the emperor welcoming Prince Aurangzeb at Shahjahanabad Fort on 12 January 1651.10 Mihr Chand distorts Shah Jahanâs nose with an inaccurate hook, tempers his all-white beard with patches of grey, and changes the jÄma colour to a lackluster green with no discernible pattern. Conversely, he maintains the solid nimbus, the position of his hands, and the specific array of jewellry on his turban and body. He sets him slightly higher in the throne, which he strips of its elaborate canopy and bejewelled surface, but complements with a footstool. Mihr Chandâs appropriations from his century-old model in Figure 13.5 do not end there. He also imports the emperorâs personal attendant, Hayat Khan, closely mimicking the face and thickset body of the figure in the earlier version even as he adjusts the angle of the flywhisk he holds. The artist even includes the figureâs identifying label, seemingly to foster the illusion of authenticating information. For good measure, he brings along two other nobles, one the closest of the three to the right in the original model, and the other, Mir JaÊ¿far, the figure in green on the paintingâs left edge. Amazingly, Mihr Chandâs acquisitive eye alights on yet another painting in the St Petersburg Albumâthe night celebration of the Prophetâs birthday in 1633âin the course of his wide-ranging search for appealing models for the six individualised mullas, plucking one prominent visage from the lower left of that painting and reversing it here to become Sayyid Jalal Bukhari, the named figure seated prominently directly opposite the emperor.11
As usual, Mihr Chand does not bother to copy particular decorative patterns on clothing or cushions, preferring to concentrate his appropriations on the more demanding elements of figuresâ faces and body positions. Paradoxically, the two most inventive features of the entire painting appear in the architecture, which is incidental to the outdoor religious performance. The first is the anomalously white awning draped over the blue-grey palatial pavilion in a strangely unstructured way. The second is the half-rolled-up screens enveloping the upper third of the buildingâs arcade. They, too, are peculiarly white rather than the ubiquitous red, and are filled fancifully with delicate carpet designs and floral curlicues that simulate gilt and inlaid architectural decoration. There are unexpected twists even in this detail, this time in the form of the strangely interpolated motifs of an ibex and European youth in adjoining cloth panels. Mihr Chand demonstrates his skill in the sensitive faces of several clerics, the varied physiognomies and expressions of the musicians, and the wild gyrations and swoons of the dancers. More revealing, however, is his entrenched habit of deploying discreet, streaky patches of murky shadow to ground the feet and bodies of selected figures, a schematic feature conspicuous in the predominately white environment here.
The corresponding scene of Jahangir initially suffers by comparison, in part because Mihr Chand reduces the visual assertiveness of the emperor by dressing him in white and installing him on a modest platform, but more so because the artist curiously opts to leave the centre of the static tripartite composition practically empty save for three candlesticks (fig. 13.6). This unorthodox choice arouses suspicions that the composition is an amalgam of sorts. For his model for Jahangir, Mihr Chand again looks no further afield than elsewhere in the St Petersburg Album, transposing the seated emperor from a dispersed JahÄngÄ«rnÄma painting of Jahangir visiting Gosain Jadrup (alternatively, Chitrarupa, c. 1559â1637/8) outside the asceticâs austere burrow.12 The painter breaches centuries-old decorum by accentuating the emperorâs double chin, jowls, and S-shaped eyebrowsâall features he habitually emphasises in portraits of others as well. He provides labels for just three individuals: Asaf Khan (d. 1641), opposite the emperor; Sadiq Khan (d. 1635), but confusingly written as Musavi Khan, along the right edge leaning on a staff; and Ê¿Ali Ahmad, the Sufi reeling in the lower left. Predictably, the first two historical figures can readily be traced back to earlier models. He does not forage among the plentiful portraits in the PÄdshÄhnÄma for a suitable model of Asaf Khan in middle age, an appearance appropriate to an event of 1619. Instead, Mihr Chand appears oblivious to the unsuitability of an anachronistic likeness and takes the most efficient creative shortcut, that is, cannibalising the figure of the elderly Asaf Khan from his own copy of a Late Shah Jahan Album painting of the emperor standing opposite his venerable minister.13 He does, however, turn to a PÄdshÄhnÄma illustration for a model of the noble identified here as Sadiq Khan.14
Less foreseeable is Mihr Chandâs dependence on models for specific Sufis swept up in ecstatic song and dance, an activity depicted sporadically in Mughal painting.15 A well-known painting of this theme, dated between 1655 and 1670 and attributed here to Hunhar (act. c. 1645â1695), is distinguished by the presence of three Muslim luminaries while at the same time hinting at religious syncretism by virtue of the named Hindu mystics in the foreground (fig. 13.7).16 Two figures in flamboyant positions establish an irrefutable connection between the two paintings. The first is a youth plopped down on the ground, bent so far forward that his turban has tumbled off, leaving his face completely obscured and the back of his bare head shown from above. His arms, concealed within the long sleeves of his woolen garment, cross over each other, and one leg juts out from the mass of his body. To flesh out his scene of dervishes carrying on before Jahangir (fig. 13.6), Mihr Chand transposes this remarkably inventive figure, but then rotates him 90° to the right and flips him over horizontally, and finally adds more linear definition to the head and torso; he also disposes of the fallen turban. The artist modifies a second imported figure in an equally ad hoc manner. This is the old Sufi stumbling backward to land on his rump and knee, his arms flailing overhead as he props himself up momentarily on his outstretched feet, his wayward turban a casualty of frenzied motion. The same figure appears in Figure 13.7, albeit with his turbaned head tilted a bit forward, his mouth fixed in a manic grin, and his beard made black and rounded. As the Sufi enters the new composition (fig. 13.6), however, he undergoes a profound change: he receives from another slumping figure in Figure 13.7 a full head transplant, which is shown flopped back in unrestrained fervour, snow-white beard reaching to his chest, and eyes rolled back in his headâall features summoned by Mihr Chand the copyist to convey a trancelike state of semi-consciousness.
Figure 13.7
Khwaja Sahib and a gathering of mystics, attributed to Hunhar, Mughal court, c. 1655â1670
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, IS.94-1965
A third quotation by Mihr Chand from Figure 13.7 consists of a figural group of four: a Sufi dancer with head turned to the side, hip outthrust, and one arm cocked overhead; a young novice steadying him at the waist; and two musicians playing a rabab (plucked lute) and a frame drum with cymbals. For good measure, Mihr Chand also adapts a foreign figure situated along the upper left edge of the two compositions, as well as a number of other bystanders, notably the square-jawed youth dressed in blue in Figure 13.7 but in mustard yellow in Figure 13.6. Further sleuthing may uncover still more borrowings of particular figural motifs. Despite their many points of overlap, the two paintings can instructively be distinguished by style. Mihr Chand consistently uses a thicker and drier application of paint, sculpts his figures with broader swaths of shadow, and articulates explicit facial expressions with darkly defined features. By contrast, Hunhar favours more thinly painted forms, which, together with discreet modelling along figuresâ contours and smoother surfaces, creates an ethereal feeling that pervades most of his works. The contrast between the two artistsâ styles can be seen in the aforementioned figural group in each work. Finally, Mihr Chand tacitly admires the effectiveness of Hunharâs use of ground shadows, but reworks the amorphous mid-toned areas below whole groups of figures into a more idiosyncratic and mannered convention, that is, darker and streakier shadows emanating from the feet of a given individual.
Below the moonlit sky in Figure 13.6 lies the sprawling structure of the tomb of Akbar, completed at Sikandra between 1605 and 1613. Given the singular depiction of this tomb in earlier Mughal painting and Mihr Chandâs habitual reliance upon pictorial models, it is all but certain that the artist copied this one element from the JahÄngÄ«rnÄma painting in which the mausoleum appears.17 Mihr Chand retains the slightly oblique view of Payagâs rendering of the distant structure, but takes liberties with its actual architectural features. These begin with his capricious substitution of gleaming white marble for the red sandstone of the original south gate, and the material reverse for the four minarets, contrasting both with an unnaturally pale blue colour of the plinth and adjoining wings. Mihr Chand repeats the emphasis on the gatewayâs deeply recessed central arch and two tiers of side arches on either side, but finishes off the remainder of building with freely invented, hard-edged, accordion-like architectural units. All in all, the multiple sources in this one example richly demonstrate the carefully concealed patchwork quality of Mihr Chandâs approach to new compositions. Furthermore, the presence of Mihr Chandâs works in the St Petersburg Album (figs. 13.5â13.6) undercuts the generally accepted belief that his career began in 1759, or exactly when the compilation of the album had ceased.18
One compelling painting (fig. 13.8) has been attributed to Mihr Chand by one scholar but later excluded from his oeuvre by another.19 Its subject, the eminent Sunni scholar and mystic MuÊ¿in al-Din Chishti (1143â1236), was born in southeastern Iran, and travelled to Central Asia and Iraq before coming to the Indian subcontinent. He spread the influential Chishtiyya order at Lahore but finally settled in Ajmer, where his tomb later became the object of devotion by millions of pilgrims, including Emperor Akbar himself (1542â1605, r. 1556â1605). Over time, he came to be revered by the Mughals as the spiritual protector of their dynasty. A minute inscription at the foot of the left pillar in this painting names him along with his customary honorific title Khwaja.
Figure 13.8
Khwaja Muʿin al-Din Chishti kneels under a scalloped archway holding a book, attributed to Mihr Chand, Faizabad, c. 1775
Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 34.12
Figure 13.9
Sages in conversation, attributed to Mihr Chand, Delhi, c. 1745â1747, St Petersburg Album, fol. 48r, detail
Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Oriental Studies, St Petersburg, Ms. E-14
The stern, dignified face of the seated MuÊ¿in al-Din Chishti replicates one devised a century and a half earlier by the Mughal artist Bichitr (act. c. 1615âc. 1650), differing from it only in the overall sepia-toned colouring of the turban and robe and in the more conspicuous indications of weathered skin and dark areas on the eye socket, cheek, and nose.20 Bichitr depicts a standing MuÊ¿in al-Din Chishti proffering a globe topped by a Timurid crownâessentially a visual allegory of religiously ordained Mughal world rule. Mihr Chand, however, envisions the spiritual leader in less exalted terms, and so turns instead to a model that could be adapted more easily to a seated portrait of the revered mystic. He finds that model, whose face is still obviously based upon Bichitrâs likeness of the saint, in his own earlier painting of MuÊ¿in al-Din Chishti seated in an assembly of six illustrious sages, a work included again in the St Petersburg Album (fig. 13.9).21 There in the upper left is MuÊ¿in al-Din Chishti, identified by the fragmentary label written beside him, sitting in exactly the same pose with arms crossed and all-white clerical robes as in Figure 13.9 while he again tenders a rosary, here marginally longer. The absence of the prescribed loose end of turban hanging down like a tail along the shoulder and back in both paintings confirms that this specific vignette in the St Petersburg Album is the keystone of Mihr Chandâs later homage portrait (fig. 13.8). The absence of crisply rendered details, especially in the figuresâ faces and in objects such as the small spittoon, distinguishes this mid eighteenth-century scene from comparable mid seventeenth-century ones. The loose vine motifs on the white ground cloth are also articulated in the same manner as those on the hanging blinds in Figure 13.5, a work signed by Mihr Chand.
The artist builds the composition of Figure 13.9 outward from the figure of MuÊ¿in al-Din Chishti. To underscore the sageâs learnedness, he brings along from the immediate model the red tome, repeating exactly its oblique angle and tooled cover. By contrast, Mihr Chand discards the bolster, a customary accessory for subjects of high status, and has the venerable mystic sit directly on a dhurrie whose loose diamond-shaped pattern complements the drab and blockish form of his body. Caught up in the mid eighteenth-century vogue for pictorial shadows, the painter slips in discrete but subtle shadows behind the figure and even the book. Ignoring the incongruity of a legendary thirteenth-century saint inhabiting a contemporary courtly environment, which is probably invoked to flatter the cosmopolitanism of his patronâs residence, he frames the composition with a pair of light grey European-style columns supporting a polylobed arch. He repeats this architectural unit from his portrait of Nawab ShujaÊ¿ al-Dawla (c. 1772â1775) modelled after a painting created by the British artist Tilly Kettle (1735â1786), but refines it here by leaving a bit of breathing room to the outside of the left column and accentuating the intrados with a band of dark brown.22
Two of Mihr Chandâs most comprehensive and challenging replications of Shah Jahan-period paintings bring out the nuances and limits of work early in his career. The first, Figure 13.10, is a little-known copy of a widely-published painting from the St Petersburg Album that is regarded as a masterpiece of Mughal painting (fig. 13.11), a renown it enjoys as much for its otherworldly subject of Hindu religious seekers as for its introspective aura and exquisite detailing.23 Working with obvious firsthand experience of this renowned model, Mihr Chand matches the scale and placement of forms as exactly as possible. Our initial impression is that he is slightly off the mark on the paintingâs compositional dimensions, forcing the backs of two figures to abut the frame so that the visual flow around the circle of five figures is constricted on three sides. This seeming discrepancy is explained, however, once we notice the physical seams of the narrow strips of paper added to Figure 13.11 on all four sides and the subtle changes in colour and style that carry into the paintingâs later extensions. The inevitable implication is that the copy (fig. 13.10) was made before the original work (fig. 13.11) was augmented to accord better with the larger proportions of the St Petersburg Album. Marcus Fraser has suggested that some of these extensions of paintings in the album were executed by Muhammad Riza Hindi.24 This points to a date of execution sometime in the mid 1740s, that is, before the last paintings were presumably added to the album in 1172 (1758/9), as attested by one border signed by Muhammad Baqir dated to that year.25
Figure 13.10
Ascetics, attributed to Mihr Chand, copy after the original by Govardhan in the St Petersburg Album, Delhi, c. 1745â1747
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst, I. 4595, fol. 18r
Figure 13.11
Ascetics, attributed to Govardhan, Mughal court, c. 1630â1635, folio from the St Petersburg Album
The Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, MS.824.2012
Mihr Chand omits only a few minor details, notably the twigs of kindling scattered around the smoldering fire in the foreground, and the water vessel and singi or horn placed before the ascetic with a string of rudrÄkÅa beads. He increases the bulk of the neem treeâs foliage against the gold sky, and dispels the sfumato effect blurring the buildings in the left distance so that they appear as schematically defined cubical structures. More noticeably, Mihr Chand makes only a cursory effort to recreate the intricately gathered folds in the red- and saffron-coloured cloths draped over parts of the asceticsâ lower bodies. He simplifies the palette and forgoes altogether the subtle white, yellow, and even blue highlights with which Govardhan (act. 1596âc. 1645) infuses life and movement into the figuresâ hair, bodies, and rudimentary garments. Rather, he renders their matted or tousled hair two dreary shades of brown, the flesh of their ash-rubbed bodies a flat scumbled grey, and their garb monotonous patches of red and saffron. The lithe, even sensuous back of the nude youth in the foreground of Figure 11âmarvellously metamorphosed from the female figure in the Penance of St. John Chrysostom taken from a c. 1541â1545 print by the German artists Barthel and Hans Behamâdevolves into a wooden form with a blotchy surface.26 While Mihr Chand approximates the muted tonality that unifies Govardhanâs work and complements its theme, he disturbs it by brightening to a discordant level two passages: the white cloth draped across the figure with a body-length mantle of dung-stiffened dreadlocks, and the white underpart of the blackbuck skin on which the ascetic sits.
Mihr Chand is clearly unable to replicate the profound and probing facial expressions of his counterpartâs figures, the elusive feature that elevates Govardhan above even his own contemporaries. The expression of the balding ascetic on the right of Figure 13.11, for example, is diminished from a sublimely pensive gaze to the open-eyed vacant stare of the copied sadhu in Figure 13.10, in large part due because of Mihr Chandâs inattentiveness to the figureâs sunken eye sockets and bushy eyebrows. Finally, in a work that must date to a stage early in his career, the artist shows that he has not yet become infatuated with European-inspired shadows, barely hinting at them with conventionally amorphous murky patches below the body and leg of the leftmost ascetic and beside the feet of the reclining youth.
A second Mihr Chand copy after a superb Shah Jahan-period painting that once formed part of the St Petersburg Album has fewer obvious technical shortcomings (figs. 13.12â13.13). The subject is six seated Hindu ascetics engrossed in various forms of meditation as they gather in a semi-circle around a small fire. Two sadhus strike poses recognisable as yogic or self-mortifying practices. One assumes the abdomen-strengthening naulÄ« kriya position, his hands planted firmly on the upper parts of his crossed legs. The naked figure to the left undergoes a more dramatic form of physical self-discipline, that is, the Å«rdhvabÄhu penance of holding one or both arms overhead for prolonged amounts of time, sometimes persevering for years even as the body atrophies. His closed eyes and uncut matted hair, beard, and coiling fingernailsâthe last of these as long as the fingers themselvesâare further signs of a rigorously austere life. One figure on the far left of Figure 13.13 wears the tripuá¹á¸ra (three horizontal stripes) markings of Shaivite adherents, a feature not present in other Mughal depictions of ascetics.27
Mihr Chandâs copy (fig. 13.12) deviates from the imagery and composition of Payagâs signed masterpiece (fig. 13.13) primarily in the two trees. In Figure 13.13, the thick trunks were extended considerably upward after the completion of the original work, presumably as the painting was augmented to accord better with the proportionately larger size of the painting fields of the St Petersburg Album; once again, this alteration must have happened after Mihr Chand had made his copy.28 Mihr Chand adds foliage to previously barren branches, thereby dissipating some of the stark intensity of the original work, especially because the leafy clusters also displace the blood-red clouds dashed against the sunset sky. The rectangular hut at the centre of both compositions sits higher in the later work and loses some of its brooding quality. But the most pronounced differences in the rendering of non-figural forms occur in Mihr Chandâs pair of trees, whose long trunk cracks are now schematically articulated and contrast exaggeratedly with the surrounding bark, a detrimental change made worse by the obviousness of the undulating groundline between the trees. To enhance the campfireâs visibility, the copyist chooses to shift it to the right and brighten it considerably. These seemingly minor modifications to what had been a very muted form in Payagâs composition alter the compositionâs centre of gravity and speak quietly to the overriding difference in the figure-ground relationship in the two scenes. By c. 1640, or late in his long career, Payag (act. c. 1591âc. 1650) had thoroughly absorbed the lessons of European-style chiaroscuro and habitually immersed his figures in a palpable twilight or dusk. Here, then, he applies paint and line thickly and powerfully so that most formsâascetics, shrubs, huts, and campfire alikeâseem to flicker enticingly in and out of obscurity. This effect is most evident in the glinting highlights on the asceticsâ saffron-coloured robes and in the dark torso and limbs of the figure with his hands held aloft. Conversely, Mihr Chand cannot resist the siren call of visual clarity, and heeds it so dutifully that what were visceral renunciant figures in Figure 13.13 become pedantic, cut-out shells of exotic ascetics superimposed on a medium-toned ground.
Figure 13.12
A gathering of mystics around a campfire, attributed to Mihr Chand, Delhi, c. 1745â1747
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst, I. 4594, fol. 34r
Figure 13.13
A gathering of mystics around a campfire, signed by Payag on the tree trunk above the asceticâs outstretched left hand, Mughal court, c. 1640, folio from the St Petersburg Album
The Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, MS.352.2002
Figure 13.14
Shaykh SaÊ¿d al-Din Hamuwayi converses with Shaykh Ê¿Ayn al-Zaman, ascribed spuriously Ê¿amal-i (work of) Hashim on the painting field, but attributed to Mihr Chand, Faizabad, c. 1765â1773
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst, I. 4589, fol. 42r
Figure 13.15
Shaykh Mahmud Shabistari converses with Shaykh Ibrahim, ascribed sawwarahu al-Ê¿abd BihzÄd (work of the slave Bihzad), attributed to Mir Sayyid Ê¿Ali, Mughal court, c. 1560â1565, folio from the Jahangir Album
The Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, MS.155.2000
In Figure 13.14, a work ascribed deceptively to Hashim (act. c. 1614âc. 1654) on the painting field but attributed here to Mihr Chand, the artist appropriates most of the key features of a painting formerly in the Jahangir (or Gulshan) Album, which is ascribed wishfully to Bihzad (c. 1460â1535) but attributed to the early Mughal master Mir Sayyid Ê¿Ali (1510â1572, fig. 13.15).29 Both scenes depict similar but not identical pairs of illustrious Sufi figures, in each case a greybeard master and an adolescent disciple, seemingly engaged in a learned conversation in a barren, mountainous environment. The labels beside the two figures in Figure 13.14 identify the elder as Shaykh SaÊ¿d al-Din Hamuwayi (1190/1199â1252/1260), and the younger as Shaykh Ê¿Ayn al-Zaman. These identifications are elaborated in a detailed inscription in the golden cartouche now located in the middle of the sky, but originally at the very top of the painting field before it was extended. In essence, the inscription indicates that the two figures are reading and pondering the Qaṣīdat al-Burda (Poem of the Mantle), a famous poem by the Egyptian poet al-Busiri (c. 1210â1295) that extols the curative powers of the Prophetâs mantle. In Figure 13.15, inscriptions written within the small lobed cartouches within adjoining illuminated panels name the corresponding figures as Shaykh Mahmud Shabistari (1288â1340), a Sufi poet born near Tabriz, and Shaykh Ibrahim, his disciple.
Because all four figures conform wholly to well-established figure types of Muslim sages or poets, one can only speculate why the compiler of these albums fancifully assigned the names of particular historical Sufi characters to essentially generic figures. The Iranian-born Shaykh SaÊ¿d al-Din Hamuwayi was, like his disciple, a follower of Najm al-Din Kubra, eventually gaining renown in the Kubrawiyya Sufi order for the many mystical texts he authored in Arabic and Persian. One distinguishing detail of his life is that he reportedly suffered from a diseaseâpresumably leprosyâthat caused him to lose a finger, which, because of the reverence he inspired, was interred ceremoniously. This legendary physical disability may be the reason that his name is attached to the figure on the right, who sits compactly with bowed head inclined to one side, knee drawn up awkwardly to his chest, and hands hidden almost completely within his wide sleeves, exposing only the thumb of the right hand. This distinctive pose occurs rarely in Mughal painting, and can be traced directly to a figure seated in an identical manner in Hunharâs painting of a samaÊ¿.30 It crops up again in another Mughal painting of c. 1650 in a composition that Mihr Chand copies in toto in the Polier album (Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin, I. 4594, fol. 28r).31 Tellingly, it also appears in slightly modified form in Figure 13.15, where the sage holds his head more upright, and no longer pulls an upraised knee close to his chest. In Figure 13.14, Mihr Chand alters the hue of the shaykhâs brown robe, makes red the hemispherical kulÄh of his turban, and switches the colour of his standard white sash to an anomalous grey-green with a dark blue hem. He eliminates the dark shadows enveloping much of the Sufiâs body and attenuates the deep folds near the ends of the sleeves, thereby responding at least as to Mir Sayyid Ê¿Aliâs model as to Hunharâs. This process, then, demonstrates that Mihr Chand was discriminating enough in his use of sources to extract discrete aspects of a single figure type from various paintings and stitch them together in a new chimerical formulation.
The young Sufi on the left also has unmistakable art historical roots in Figure 13.15, namely, in the discipleâs face, dress, and basic pose. Yet the figure raises his hand up from knee to waist to read from an oblong book inscribed with pseudo-writing rather than a single sheet of paper, a pose and trait adapted from still another work by Mir Sayyid Ê¿Ali.32 At the compositional level, Mihr Chand removes the rock-lined diagonal stream and the metaphorically paired flowering sapling and vertical cypress that separate master and pupil in Figure 13.15. Having done away with these conventional intervening elements, he establishes the requisite buffering distance between the two figures by placing each one on a self-contained pod of grass, a bizarre device that functions as the verdant equivalent of the idiosyncratic pools of shadow used in his other works.
Mihr Chand tops off his mélange with a smattering of historicising details: a flat blue sky with streaming Chinese-style clouds, a barren landscape with an undulating horizon, a stump of a desiccated tree, an anthropomorphic grotesque in the outcropping, and an oversized ibex poking its head from behind a ridge. He inserts into this medley one misbegotten detailâa tree peony in gaudy bloomâalong with several delicately rendered floral clusters and individual specimens. Of the five pairs of birds scattered across the composition, the upright and overlapping red-capped sarus cranes in the left foreground do not appear as a separate motif in Persian or Mughal painting until the mid seventeenth century, and very probably were lifted from a Shah Jahan-period border illumination.
Figure 13.16
Two musicians, attributed Mihr Chand, ascribed spuriously Ê¿amal-i (work of) Mirza Hashim, Faizabad or Lucknow, c. 1770â1775
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Museum für Islamische Kunst, I. 4593, fol. 13r
An unassuming work of two musicians seemingly drawn from life demonstrates Mihr Chandâs ability to simulate the drawing style of Hashim, another Jahangir- and Shah Jahan-period master (fig. 13.16). Although the animated musicians have some obvious affinity with the motley figures seated outdoors in an accomplished painting by Bichitr, the characters are different enough that there can be no question of a formal debt to the latter.33 Initially, the engaging characterisations of the performers and the competent quality of line in Figure 13.16 appear reason enough to take the ascription to Mirza Hashim at face value and to date the work accordingly to c. 1630, a midpoint in the artistâs career.34 Re-evaluated in light of this study of Mihr Chandâs versatile imitative powers, however, the drawing is recognised here as another example of his handiwork. Several features point to this conclusion. The slightly cropped ascription is written on the painting field in a formulaic manner, albeit with an anomalous title Mirza preceding the name of Hashim. The overall livelinessâincluding the appealingly self-conscious outward gaze of the scruffy figure playing the á¹ÄmbÅ«r, a long-necked plucked luteâis unprecedented in Hashimâs oeuvre, which is known for its graphic precision, stately poses, and aloof expressions. None of Hashimâs actual drawings have modelling as extensive and formulaic as what appears here in the face, arms, tambourine, and setting, nor do any ever exhibit the red tinting seen in the clothing here.35 Conversely, this same kind of tinting occurs in Figure 13.3 as well as in a painted sketch with a dubious ascription to Hashim, suggesting that it, too, may be by Mihr Chand.36 Intriguingly, the name Hashim turns up occasionally on some derivative eighteenth-century paintings (e.g., fig. 13.14), though not yet predictably or exclusively enough for one to conclude that Mihr Chand adopted that moniker in homage to the seventeenth-century painter.37
Like Figure 13.6, the subject of Figure 13.17, attributed here to Mihr Chand, corresponds specifically enough to an episode described in the JahÄngÄ«rnÄma to lead to speculation that the work is an eighteenth-century copy of a lost early seventeenth-century original composition (fig. 13.17). The episode focuses on the extraordinary spectacle of a man dying before the very eyes of Jahangir and members of his court. It is tempting to identify the figure as Ê¿Inayat Khan, an official so fatally ravaged by alcohol and opium that Jahangir summoned artists to capture the manâs dire condition as he lay on his deathbed in October 1618.38 Scholars suspect that one or both of the extant images were either meant to be inserted in the manuscript of the JahÄngÄ«rnÄma or used in preparation of formal full-blown versions of the scene that included Jahangir himself, though no such version of the heart-wrenching scene is known among the surviving contemporary illustrations of the JahÄngÄ«rnÄma.39 The question, therefore, is what this eighteenth-century painting tells us about the presumed original model as well as the artist responsible for this later iteration.
There are obvious differences between the stricken man here and the painted version of Ê¿Inayat Khan, especially the fully clothed body in one case and the emaciated physique exposed by an open robe in the other. Some particular details in this scene also seem to point to a different spectacle of death: an event involving Mulla Ê¿Ali the seal engraver, who ecstatically recited a poetical couplet with one breath and collapsed fatally with the next, an episode described in a JahÄngÄ«rnÄma entry of March 1610.40 The first is the presence of three musicians among the figures on the left and another along the upper right edge, which accords well with Jahangirâs mention of singers performing before him as Sayyid Shah danced. Another is the action of two physicians taking the victimâs pulse in hope that he could be resuscitated. Yet this scenario, too, is complicated by an unexpected aspect of this painting, for it gradually becomes apparent that the painting is based not on one Jahangir-period model in its entirety but on fragments of many works. As we shall see, this richly detailed painting is the most complicated and creative recombination of Mihr Chandâs long career.41
Figure 13.17
Jahangir witnesses the death of Mulla Ê¿Ali the seal engraver, attributed to Mihr Chand, Faizabad or Lucknow, c. 1775â1780
Private collection
Each section of the bifurcated composition brims with carefully wrought passages. Framed in the upper centre of the painting by a canopy, plush cushion, and luxurious textile draped over a raised section of the balustrade, Jahangir gesticulates toward the stricken noble. The patientâs frightful condition is expressed by his vacant eyes rolled up in a thrown-back head, and by the dismay of the physicians kneeling beside him. The artist focuses attention on the dying man with a semi-circle of darkness just beyond his head, a dramatic device intended to convey the empirical effects of light coming from the two-pronged candlestick held a mere half-metre away but functioning more deeply as the aura of doom enveloping the figure. Mihr Chand deftly renders the filtered optical effect created by the pierced stone panels of the balustrade, but is characteristically indifferent enough to the technical demands of geometric patterns that the panelsâ fine and rigid latticework wavers like warped mesh instead.
Mulla Ê¿Aliâs plight is received dispassionately by the many identifiable grandees on hand. Jahangir- and Shah Jahan-period artists habitually built up such group scenes by inserting previously formulated individual portraits into ranks calibrated by social and political status. Mihr Chand follows this practice as well, dipping into several specific darbÄr scenes for reliable likenesses. Because Jahangir is never depicted standing alone in a de facto audience scene, the artist finds a model for the full-length figure in an independent portrait of c. 1620 by Balchand that shows the emperor wearing a very similar white jÄma and tie-dyed paá¹kÄ (fig. 13.18). Knowing that Jahangir must dominate the centre of the composition, Mihr Chand wedges him in between the canopyâs uprights, a decision that makes one pole infelicitously cross over parts of the rulerâs body and arm. Since the artist has only a passable facility for the nuanced planes and surfaces of faces, Jahangirâs visage, which shows signs of correction around his profile and neck, has the same double chin and S-shaped eyebrows as in Figure 13.6, but a more flatly rendered brow, cheek, and neck. That same flattened quality continues in both the shape and articulation of his white jÄma, which is embellished with gratuitous decorative bands added to the collar, shoulder, and cuffs, once again in a manner similar to Figure 13.6.
Immediately behind the emperor is his second son, Parwiz (1590â1626), whose features match the princeâs in a c. 1614 darbÄr scene by Manohar.42 Mihr Chand selects from the same darbÄr painting the likenesses of the next three closest figures: Raja Bhao Singh (1577â1621) holding the royal flywhisk and distinguished by his starkly groomed stubble beard; the emperorâs chief attendant Ani Rai Singhdalen (d. 1615/6) at top, and the distinguished IÊ¿timad al-Dawla (d. 1622) with a closely cropped white beard. The two remaining figures on this side are relative newcomers to such scenes. The one with a musical instrument in hand is a ghazal singer named Shauqi, whom Jahangir extolled by writing that he âsings in a manner that clears the rust from all heartsâ.43 The figure directly below him is Jahangirâs fourth son, Shahriyar (1605â1628), whose faint moustache befits an adolescent at least fifteen years old, and not the five-year-old child he would be if the painting accurately represented an event that occurred in 1610.44
Figure 13.18
Jahangir with tie-dyed paá¹kÄ, ascribed Balchand, Mughal court, c. 1620
Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 45.1
The images of the nobles opposite Jahangir are also indebted to various painted sources. With their physical proximity to the emperor corresponding to their relative rank, they are (from right to left): Ê¿Abd al-Rahim Khankhanan, Asaf Khan, Muqarrab Khan, Sharif Khan, Mirza Ghazi, AÊ¿zam Khan, Mirza Rustam Safavi, and Mirza Bhao Singh. One of these, Sharif Khan, is known from a practically identical portrait in the Nawruz darbÄr in St Petersburg, where he again wears around his neck a small pouch containing the emperorâs personal seal.45 The youth positioned slightly above him can be identified as Mirza Ghazi (d. 1612) on the basis of an inscribed independent portrait, but Mihr Chand apparently reuses the same handsome face for a menial attendant in the lower left corner of Figure 13.3.46 Even the half-obscured figure depicted in three-quarter view along the left edge is taken from another PÄdshÄhnÄma scene of c. 1640.47 Only the dying figure and the two physicians have no known counterpart in Mughal painting. It seems likely, therefore, that this subgroup is based on a European model, as were most Mughal scenes of physicians attending to bedridden or dying figures.48
In every corner of the painting, it seems, is yet another appropriated passage. One noteworthy example is the black marble throne shrouded with a luxurious white cloth placed at the far end of the terrace, where it overlooks a silvery Yamuna River shimmering in the moonlight. This particular appurtenance in the same position is copied from an actual JahÄngÄ«rnÄma painting that depicts Jahangir receiving the exotic gifts presented by Muqarrab Khan (d. 1646), a work that along with PÄdshÄhnÄma fol. 218v also serves as the overall template for Mihr Chandâs composition.49 Flanking that covered throne is a pair of very elaborate and three-dimensional hypostyle halls. The one on the left has a gleaming presence, with shadowy scarlet blinds hung between heavily modelled emerald green columns and capitals outlined in gold. The other has no blinds between its deeply modelled, gilded wooden columns outlined in red, but is more extravagant in other respects. These columns and the extraordinarily deeply ruffled canopy to the right are clearly lifted from a PÄdshÄhnÄma darbÄr dated to c. 1640.50 Most conspicuous is a mural triptych above the central, half-open door that features a standing figure on either side of a bust-length portrait of Jahangir himself, a vainglorious conceit never seen in seventeenth-century painting. This element mimics the similar portrait of Akbar above the doorway in another PÄdshÄhnÄma illustration, where it is intended to project dynastic continuity and paternal approval, a pointless function here where Jahangir is the reigning emperor.51 Almost as unexpected is a feature seen on the outer face of the rolled-up, red-trimmed cloth blind directly below: a painting of male and female Persian-style lovers. Adorning the walls themselves are vertical strips of niches filled with painted bottles, and more surprisingly, narrow mirrors with faint indications of full-length figures.
A more sombre mood pervades the courtyard below, where several courtiers are paraphrased from one particularly adaptable PÄdshÄhnÄma darbÄr scene (fol. 49r). The artist infuses a sense of dread into what might have been an innocuous, even formulaic part of the painting by reducing the colour saturation in several areasânotably the carpet, the greyed foliage of the tree in the corner, and most jÄmas and pÄyjÄmasâand by arranging for a dark curtain of shadow to fall across selected figures and architectural surfaces. In some instances, Mihr Chandâs exaggerated shadows diverge illogically from empirically observed effects of specific sources of light. For example, the courtier dressed in orange is half-engulfed in deep shadow despite the torch held immediately behind him, and the dim door panels and wall sections directly underneath the overhanging balcony defy the amount and direction of light emitted by the blazing torch planted before the door. Among Mihr Chandâs distinctive formal traits most strikingly manifest in this painting are the sculpted, strongly modelled faces in three-quarter view, the thin white highlights inside the profile of every figure, the columnar form of most bodies, and the highly schematic folds of the courtiersâ jÄmas. The artist favours squarish hands, experiments with strong shadows, and conceives images more in terms of drawn forms than of opaquely painted surfaces.
In sum, Mihr Chand adapts an existing composition for his work, fills it out with a mixed bag of specific courtiers and motifs from at least eight different paintings, and renders them in his own distinctive style. Since those identifiable source paintings were made by different artists over a span of some thirty years, we must finally abandon the notion that Figure 13.17 was modelled after a singular hypothetical JahÄngÄ«rnÄma illustration of the same episode. What, then, inspired this unusual scene? Given the prevailing taste for historicising subjects, which also led two of Mihr Chandâs contemporaries to concoct imaginary historical scenes, I think that Mihr Chand or his patron hit on the novel theme after learning of the event from its brief description in the TÅ«zuk-i JahÄngÄ«rÄ«, meaning that the catalyst for this painting was not an existing visual source but a literary one.52 It follows that Figure 13.6, Jahangirâs sponsorship of an ostentatious performance of piety outside the Tomb of Akbar, was conceived and visualised in the same way.
An important factor in Mihr Chandâs career is the work of his father, Ganga Ram, whose name appears in almost all Mihr Chandâs signatures. Scholarly awareness of Ganga Ram has been constrained by the meagre amount of documented work: two obscure ascribed paintings, one of which depicts a standing aged Akbar holding up a sarpÄ«ch (turban ornament) topped by an aigrette, a gesture and object that imply the power to confer status or rulership on an unseen recipient (fig. 13.19).53 The key aspect of this painting and others newly attributed below to Ganga Ram is not its style, which is workmanlike at best, but that it begins to establish a taste and market for close copies of paintings from the reigns of Jahangir and Shah Jahan, especially those depicting Mughal sovereigns themselves.
Ganga Ramâs portrait of Akbar is a pale imitation of a painting of c. 1645 attributed here to Payag (fig. 13.20).54 The Shah Jahan-period master adopts the three-quarter view employed conventionally in posthumous portraits of Akbar from as early as 1610. Yet his rendering of Akbarâs face is distinctive nonetheless: brow furrowed and eyebrows upturned in a rather anxious expression, hollowed cheeks subtly grizzled, and a crescent-shaped mustache whitened more than ever before. Payag imparts volume to the emperorâs pink jÄma by means of pronounced contour modelling and broad vertical folds, and adorns the golden paá¹kÄ with a vine pattern as luxuriant and bold as those on various textiles in two of his signed PÄdshÄhnÄma illustrations.55 He blurs the horizon line of the hazy ground, which he lightens with a few delicate floral specimens and a hint of buildings in the distance. The sunset sky, a mass of dense golden clouds laced with red, reads as both a celestial extension of Akbarâs radiant halo and a harmonious compositional counterweight to the ground below.
Figure 13.19
Emperor Akbar with a sarpīch, ascribed in the lower margin: Picture of Hazrat Akbar Shah Padshah, ʿamal-i Ganga Ram muṣavvir, Delhi, c. 1740
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, RP-T-1993-173
Figure 13.20
Emperor Akbar with a sarpīch, attributed to Payag, Mughal court, c. 1645
Musée national des Arts asiatiquesâGuimet, Paris, MA1652
Ganga Ram is disinterested in these ancillary aspects of compositional design and painting surface. Replicating the outlined shapes of figureâs limbs, dress, and facial features, he greys out Akbarâs facial features, inadvertently draining the figure of all semblance of vitality. The artist characteristically introduces superficial changes to the colour of the jÄma, lappets, and turban, as well as to the structure of the waist sash. He also deviates more consequentially from his model by ill-advisedly stripping the painting of its complementary atmospheric sky and spongy ground. Though Mihr Chand undisputedly eclipses his fatherâs achievements, he initially absorbs many of the reductionist tendencies described here while rejecting his fatherâs penchant for incongruously strong colours and patterns.
A review of eighteenth-century paintings in several little-studied albums in European collections has allowed me to identify six other examples of Ganga Ramâs work. The two paintings most obviously attributable to him are copies of other iconic images of Akbar seated on an obliquely set throne with an attached parasol.56 Both examples have the same facial features described above, but the first (from the Awadh Album) also introduces sagging neck skin, a shockingly undignified sign of age. The second, which depicts Akbar holding the Timurid crown, is a reprise of the central figure from a well-known dynastic painting by Bichitr dated regnal year 3 (1630/31) and depicts three emperors and their ministers.57 Ganga Ram relies upon the same source for a model for a complementary portrait of the enthroned Jahangir, but supplies a sarpÄ«ch, simplifies the structure, decoration, and orientation of the newly stark throne, and scatters some amorphous orange clouds in the sky.58
Gangaâs Ramâs second ascribed painting, a portrait of an unidentified nobleman, is finer in every detail but again renders the hands as blockish, scoop-like forms and includes the familiar element of a white sash laid over a broader coloured paá¹kÄ.59 It in turn relates closely to a newly attributed portrait of Muhammad Husayn of Tabriz.60 Two other attributed works combine elements from the abovementioned paintings, especially the artistâs preference for flat shapes generally and cylindrical bolsters that juxtapose the colours maroon and tin grey in their oversize decorative patterns.61 Taken together, these paintings by Ganga Ram are a large part of what instilled a taste for historicising copies in the more talented Mihr Chand.
Viewed from a distance, many of Mihr Chandâs copies and adaptations of Mughal paintings from centuries past might readily be dismissed as derivative and unoriginal. But the exercise of seeing these reconstituted works at close rangeâfigure by figure, passage by passageâand gauging what has been taken and what has been left behind, fosters new understanding of Mihr Chandâs wide-ranging samplings of Mughal painting as creative acts in their own right. Like many works of art, these amended imitations are a kind of tribute to the past, one motivated largely by a wave of political and cultural nostalgia for the heyday of Mughal power and prestige. But these paintings are also sometimes ambitious enough that they suggest that an entirely different estimation of the past is in play, that is, as a benchmark that Mihr Chand and others of the new age expect to be able to meet and surpass as they match wits and brush against their forerunners.
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Friederike Weis, who has generously assisted me in ways too numerous to list, and in the process has become a lively correspondent and valued colleague. I am grateful, too, to Catherine Glynn Benkaim, who patiently assessed my initial slate of images and offered thoughtful suggestions.
For the former, see Keelan Overton, ââ¯âMaid Killing a Snakeâ and âDervish Receiving a Visitorâ: A Re-examination of Bijapuri Masterpieces through the Lens of the Lucknow Copyâ, in Indo-Muslim Cultures in Transition, ed. Alka Patel and Karen Leonard (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 37â60, and figs. 3.5â3.6. For the latter, see Malini Roy, âSome Unexpected Sources for Paintings by the Artist Mihr Chand (fl. c. 1759â1786), son of Ganga Ramâ, South Asian Studies 26/1 (2010), pp. 21â30 (esp. pp. 25â26 and figs. 6â7).
For these artists, respectively, see Toby Falk and Mildred Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library (London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1981), cat.nos. 177, 269â274, 312; 261â262, 352vii, 352xi, 352xv, and 352xxvi; 248, 251â259, 362, 351; Linda York Leach, Paintings from India: Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, vol. 8. (London: Nour Foundation, 1998), pp. 166â179; and J.P. Losty and Malini Roy, Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire (London: The British Library, 2012), pp. 192â193.
The first comprehensive study of this prolific artist will appear in John Seyller, âTwo Rediscovered 17th-century Mughal Masters: Ilyas Bahadur and Hardasâ, Journal of the David Collection, forthcoming. The connection between the two paintings was first noticed by Ernst Kühnel, âMihr Tschand, ein unbekannter Mogulmalerâ, Berliner Museen: Berichte aus den Preussischen Kunstsammlungen 43, nos. 11â12 (1922), pp. 115â122, esp. p. 119 and fig. 101. A more extensive discussion appears in Malini Roy, âThe Artist Mihr Chand son of Ganga Ram (fl. 1759â1786): Idiosyncrasies in the Late Mughal Painting Traditionâ (PhD diss., School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2009), pp. 152â153. The signatures of the two respective artists appear in the lower left corner in Figure 13.1 and in the upper right centre in Figure 13.2.
Figure 13.1 measures 29.5â¯Ãâ¯21.2â¯cm, while Figure 13.2 measures 30.3â¯Ãâ¯21.8â¯cm. Roy, âThe Artist Mihr Chandâ, p. 111, records that seven paintings by Mihr Chand are copies of paintings owned by Gentil.
Linda York Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings in the Chester Beatty Library, 2 vols. (London: Scorpion Cavendish, 1995), vol. 1, p. 493. A comprehensive study of the PÄdshÄhnÄma manuscript (Royal Library, Windsor RCIN 1005025) was published by Milo Cleveland Beach, Ebba Koch, and Wheeler Thackston, King of the World: The Padshahnama, an Imperial Manuscript from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle (London: Azimuth Editions Limited in association with the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 1997), in which this painting is published as pl. 6 and discussed on pp. 31, 34, 163â164.
The JahÄngÄ«rnÄma painting, signed by Nanha and dated to c. 1618, is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, IS.185-1984:
Elaine Wright (ed.), MuraqqaÊ¿: Imperial Mughal Albums from the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (Alexandria, VA: Art Services International, 2008), pp. 260â263.
Elena Kostiukovitch (ed.), The St. Petersburg Muraqqaʿ: Album of Indian and Persian Miniatures from the 16th through the 18th Century and Specimens of Persian Calligraphy by ʿImad al-Hasani (Milan: Leonardo Arte, 1996), p. 112; Wheeler M. Thackston (ed.), The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India, trans. and annotated by Thackston (New York and Oxford: Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 310.
Twenty-two paintings bearing Mihr Chandâs extended âsignatureâ (Ê¿amal-i Mihr Chand pisar-i GangÄ RÄm, i.e., âwork of Mihr Chand, son of Ganga Ramâ) can be found in the Berlin Polier albums I. 4594, I. 4595, and I. 4596, first noticed and described by Kühnel, âMihr Tschandâ. Friederike Weis draws attention to another five paintings ascribed in the same manner: Indian Drawings 13, fols. 3v and 4v (John Rylands Library, Manchester), Nawab Amir al-Umara Zabita Khan (National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, DC, S1986.416), and the Polier album (Phillipps MS. 6730) sold by Sothebyâs 27 November 1974, lots 723 (Antoine Polier watches a nautch, now Aga Khan collection) and 757.
The painting is dated c. 1651â1660, and is published in Kostiukovitch (ed.), The St. Petersburg MuraqqaÊ¿, fol. 25r, pl. 129.
The painting, Freer Gallery of Art F1942.17, is published in Milo Cleveland Beach, The Imperial Image: Paintings for the Mughal Court, revised and expanded edition (Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 2012), cat.no. 22f reverse; and Kostiukovitch (ed.), The St. Petersburg Muraqqaʿ, pl. 181.
Musée du Louvre, Paris, OA7171, now attributed to Payag and dated to c. 1618â1620 (
Emperor Shah Jahan and Asaf Khan, St Petersburg Album, fol. 27r, published in Kostiukovitch (ed.), The St. Petersburg MuraqqaÊ¿, pl. 150, and p. 99, where it is misdated to the mid seventeenth century. It is, in fact, Mihr Chandâs own copy of Emperor Shah Jahan and Asaf Khan (National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, DC, S1986.403), which is ascribed to Bichitr and dated to c. 1640.
PÄdshÄhnÄma, fol. 43v, published in Beach, Koch, and Thackston, King of the World, pl. 5.
Bonnie C. Wade, Imaging Sound: An Ethnomusicological Study of Music, Art, and Culture in Mughal India (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998), p. 149, lists and illustrates a number of earlier examples.
See Elinor Gadon, âDara Shikuhâs Mystical Vision of Hindu-Muslim Synthesisâ, in Facets of Indian Art, ed. Robert Skelton et al. (London: V&A Publishing, 1986), pp. 153â157; John Guy and Deborah Swallow (eds.), Arts of India: 1550â1900 (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1990), fig. 71. The new attribution to Hunhar is supported by comparison to a painting ascribed to Hunhar (British Library, Johnson Album 4, no. 5, published in Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures, cat.no. 93) and A Sufi Spiritual Concert, a painting attributed to Hunhar and published in John Seyller, Mughal and Deccani Paintings: Eva and Konrad Seitz Collection of Indian Miniatures (Zurich: Museum Rietberg, 2010), cat.no. 14.
The painting, entitled Jahangir Receives a Prisoner, and attributed here to Payag, dates to c. 1618â1620. The work, now in the Chester Beatty Library (In 34.5), is published in Wright (ed.), MuraqqaÊ¿, cat.no. 24; and Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, vol. 1, cat.no. 3.1 and pl. 52.
Roy, âThe Artist Mihr Chandâ, p. 105, postulates that Mihr Chand was established by the late 1750s. On p. 111, she also declares âIt has been difficult to locate any illustrations by Mihr Chand that pre-date 1759â, a date established by the artistâs two portraits of Shah Ê¿Alam II, who claimed the throne in December 1759.
Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, vol. 2, cat.no. 6.233, pp. 656â659, attributes this painting to the artist; Roy, âThe Artist Mihr Chandâ, p. 374, rejects this attribution without explanation.
Chester Beatty Library In 07A.14. The painting is dated c. 1610â1618 and is published in Wright (ed.), MuraqqaÊ¿, cat.no. 36A; Thackston (ed.), The Jahangirnama, p. 150; and Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, vol. 1, cat.no. 3.24.
The other figures are identified in Welch in Kostiukovitch (ed.), The St. Petersburg MuraqqaÊ¿, p. 74, where the painting is mistakenly dated to the mid seventeenth century. The upper third of the painting, which imitates Harbor Scene by the Flemish artist Raphael Sadeler the Younger (1584â1632) after a work by Paul Bril (1553/4â1626), was apparently also supplied by Mihr Chandâs workshop in the mid eighteenth century.
Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS. Douce Or. b. 3, fol. 18r, published in Andrew Topsfield, Paintings from Mughal India (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2008), cat.no. 74.
The painting is published in Kostiukovitch (ed.), The St. Petersburg MuraqqaÊ¿, pl. 231; Milo Cleveland Beach, The Grand Mogul: Imperial Painting in India, 1600â1660 (Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 1978), cat.no. 41; and Stuart Cary Welch, Imperial Mughal Painting (New York: George Braziller, 1978), pl. 24.
Marcus Fraser, âMuhammad Riza-i Hindi. An Important Indo-Persian Artist of the Mid-Eighteenth Centuryâ, Journal of the David Collection 5 (1921), pp. 178â229, esp. p. 202.
On the dating and Mashhad as the place of the compilation of the St Petersburg Album, see Kostiukovitch (ed.), The St. Petersburg MuraqqaÊ¿, pp. 31â32; and Fraser, âMuhammad Riza-i Hindiâ, pp. 186â188. Adel Adamova (personal communication) has kindly drawn my attention to her work that establishes the patron of the album as Mirza Mahdi Khan Astarabadi (d. 1173 [1759/60]), a historian and the chief secretary of Nadir Shah (1688â1747).
This identification, first made by Gauvin Bailey, is published in Kostiukovitch (ed.), The St. Petersburg Muraqqaʿ, p. 125. A copy of this engraving in the British Museum (1882,0812.326) is accessible on the Museum website.
James Mallinson, âYogic Identities: Tradition and Transformationâ. Online publication under the auspices of the Freer Gallery of Art, c. 2014:
The horizontal seam of the addition is visible at the point at which two thin branches cross. This corresponds closely to the 3â¯cm difference in the height of the two paintings.
The latter painting is published in John Seyller, âFive Folios from the Jahangir Albumâ, in God is Beautiful and Loves Beauty: The Object in Islamic Art and Culture, ed. Sheila Blair and Jonathan Bloom (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013), pp. 300â339, and fig. 267, and discussed esp. on pp. 303â307.
The painting is published in Seyller, Mughal and Deccani Paintings, cat.no. 14.
Both paintings are discussed in Roselyne Hurel, Miniatures et peintures indiennes, vol. 1 (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2010), cat.no. 71 and fig. (cat. 71).
National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, DC, S1986.291, published in Seyller, âFive Foliosâ, fig. 269.
Victoria and Albert Museum IM.27-1925, published in Susan Stronge, Painting for the Mughal Emperor: The Art of the Book, 1560â1660 (London: V&A Publishing, 2002), pl. 122. A later drawing certainly copied from Figure 13.16 is found in the British Library (Johnson Album 1, no. 23), published in Falk and Archer, Indian Miniatures, cat.no. 220ii.
This position was advanced in Milo Cleveland Beach, Mughal and Rajput Painting, The New Cambridge History of India 1: 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 148, 151, but has recently been revised by him in light of the findings here (personal communication). Hashimâs career is discussed in John Seyller, âHashimâ, in Pratapaditya Pal (ed.), Master Artists of the Imperial Mughal Court (Bombay: Marg Publications, 1991), pp. 105â118.
Compare a portrait drawing dated c. 1642 and credibly ascribed to Mir Hashim (Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, no. B8170), published in The Indian Portrait, 1560â1860, ed. Rosemary Crill and Kapil Jariwala (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2010), cat.no. 28.
Portrait of Hakim Mamuna, ascribed spuriously Ê¿amal-i Hashim and published in Yedda Godard, âUn Album de Portraits des Princes Timurides de lâIndeâ, Athar-e Iran 2 (1937), pp. 179â277, fig. 97; and Tahawwur Khan Shooting, ascribed spuriously to Hashim, Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 63.4, published in Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, vol. 1, cat.no. 3.76.
A painting of a shrike on a branch, for example, in the British Museum (1969,0317,0.5) is ascribed spuriously to Hashim, and may well be associated with Mihr Chandâs style.
See Thackston (ed.), The Jahangirnama, pp. 279â281 for the emperorâs account of this figureâs demise. Two well-known versions of this dying figure are discussed in John Seyller, âBalchandâ, in Beach, Fischer, and Goswamy (eds.), Masters of Indian Painting, vol. 1, pp. 337â356, figs. 10â11.
See Milo Cleveland Beach, The Imperial Image: Paintings for the Mughal Court (Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art, 1981), pp. 172â173, for a discussion of the imperial copy and list of known illustrations.
Thackston (ed.), The Jahangirnama, p. 109.
J.P. Losty, A Princeâs Eye: Imperial Mughal Painting from a Princely Collection (London: Francesca Galloway, 2013), cat.no. 7, rejects any connection to Mihr Chand and sees this painting instead as stylistically similar to a painting signed by the little-known artist Miran and dated 1147 (1734/35). The painting is in the National Library of Russia, Dorn 489, fol. 3r.
Victoria and Albert Museum IM.9-1925, published in Stronge, Painting for the Mughal Emperor, pl. 87.
To my knowledge, he appears in only one darbÄr scene, the well-known example of c. 1624 in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (14.654):
The face matches an inscribed portrait of Prince Shahriyar in the Musée du Louvre (OA7181)
The Nawruz darbÄr in the St Petersburg Album, fol. 22r, is published in Kostiukovitch (ed.), The St. Petersburg MuraqqaÊ¿, pl. 177, and John Seyller, âManoharâ, in Beach, Fischer, and Goswamy (eds.), Masters of Indian Painting, vol. 1, pp. 135â152, esp. pp. 146â148, and fig. 11.
See the independent portrait of Mirza Ghazi in Victoria and Albert Museum IM.118-1921, published in Stronge, Painting for the Mughal Emperor, pl. 88.
PÄdshÄhnÄma, fol. 49r, published in Beach, Koch, and Thackston, King of the World, pl. 9.
The closest European comparison I have found is (in reverse) Deathbed of a Rich Man, an engraving by the Dutch artist Johan Barra (1581â1634), Ashmolean Museum WA2003.Douce.5496
Raza Library, Rampur, Album 2, fol. 7, published in Barbara Schmitz and Ziyaud-Din A. Desai, Mughal and Persian Paintings and Illustrated Manuscripts in The Raza Library, Rampur (New Delhi and Rampur: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and Rampur Raza Library, 2006), pl. 6.
PÄdshÄhnÄma, fol. 49r, published in Beach, Koch and Thackston, King of the World, pl. 9.
PÄdshÄhnÄma, fol. 43v, published in Beach, Koch, and Thackston, King of the World, pl. 5.
Both Mir Kalan Khan and Miran, for example, depict similar scenes of Jahangir or Shah Jahan watching a wrestling match. The former is published in Sothebyâs, London, 6 October 2015, lot 41; the latter is cited in note 41 above.
Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, vol. 1, cat.no. 4.23, pp. 504â505; and Roy, âThe Artist Mihr Chandâ, pp. 103â104, and figs. 76â77. Leach dates these works to c. 1710, which improbably would make the artist approximately seventy years old when Mihr Chand purportedly began his career in 1759 and about fifty when he fathered his son. She bases this date on the similarity of those works to the continuing imperial Mughal style.
The attribution is supported by the paintingâs close resemblance to the ascribed portrait of Islam Khan Mashhadi, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 55.121.26 (
PÄdshÄhnÄma, fols. 195r and 243v, published in Beach, Koch, and Thackston, King of the World, pls. 39 and 43.
British Museum, London, 1974,0617,0.17.12 (
Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 07.19, published in Wright (ed.), Muraqqaʿ, cat.no. 54A.
Emperor Jahangir enthroned and holding a sarpīch. Royal Asiatic Society, London, RAS 053.002.
Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, In 42.3, published in Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, cat.no. 4.23.
British Museum, London, 1974,0617,0.10.37
Vizier Hasan Ê¿Ali Khan, British Museum, London, 1974,0617,0.10.56, and painting of a lady listening to a female vÄ«á¹Ä player, Royal Asiatic Society, London RAS 053.009.