Indian Paintings in Oxford Part-1

Although few acquisitions have been made in the twentieth century, the Bodleian now has one of the most important Mughal collections in the world. Since the 1950s an Indian painting collection has also been established in the Ashmolean Museum's Department of Eastern Art (before 1963, the Museum of Eastern Art in the old Indian Institute). Although much smaller than the Bodleian collection, it is to some extent complementary in its representation of the Rajput schools, which in most cases have only become widely known within the last forty years. From this long history of sporadic collecting Oxford is able to show a rich variety of the main types of Indian painting from the eleventh to the late nineteenth century: from Pala Buddhist paintings on palm-leaf to the Kalighat bazaar pictures of 1880s Calcutta or an oil-painting on a classical literary theme by the acadernicist Ravi Varma. But the main strength of the collections, and of the Bodleian's especially, lies in imperial or provincial Mughal painting, with a strong historical emphasis on the eighteenth-century schools. A series of posts of this size can offer only a small sample of such diverse collections.

यद्यपि बीसवीं शताब्दी में कुछ अधिग्रहण किए गए हैं, बोडलियन के पास अब दुनिया में सबसे महत्वपूर्ण मुगल संग्रह है।  अश्मोलियन संग्रहालय  (1963 से पहले,पुराने भारतीय संस्थान में पूर्व कला संग्रहालय)के पूर्व कला विभाग में 1950 के दशक में एक भारतीय चित्रकला संग्रह स्थापित किया गया था।हालांकि बोडलियन संग्रह की तुलना में अश्मोलियन संग्रहालय बहुत छोटा है, यह राजपूत कला  के अपने नमूने, (पिछले चालीस वर्षों) के लिये व्यापक रूप से जाना जाता है।छिटपुट संग्रह के इस लंबे इतिहास से, ऑक्सफ़ोर्ड ग्यारहवीं से उन्नीसवीं सदी के अंत तक भारतीय चित्रकला के मुख्य प्रकारों की एक समृद्ध विविधता दिखाने में सक्षम है:पाल-बौद्ध चित्रों से ताड़-पत्ते पर कालीघाट के बाजारों  की  1880 के दशक की कलकत्ता या एकादशीवादी रवि वर्मा द्वारा एक शास्त्रीय साहित्यिक विषय पर तेल-चित्रकला।लेकिन संग्रह की मुख्य ताकत, और बोडलियन की विशेष रूप से, अठारहवीं शताब्दी की शाही या प्रांतीय मुगल चित्रकला में निहित है। इस आकार के ब्लॉग पोस्ट की एक श्रृंखला इस तरह के विविध संग्रह का केवल एक छोटा सा नमूना पेश कर सकती है।

The present selection is restricted to the Mughal, Deccani and Rajput schools up to c.1800, with some bias towards the first, and most inspired, a century of Mughal painting (c.1560-1660), from the reign of Akbar to the fall of Shah Jahan. Akbar (1556-1605), greatest of the Mughal emperors, was a ruler of boundless energy who personally encouraged the development of the Mughal style, from a brilliant synthesis of Persian technique, Indian vitality and European naturalism. The earlier work of his reign shows a transformation of the delicate Persian idiom by the vigor of the mainly Indian artists recruited to the imperial studio. Later productions show greater refinement and individualism, as seen in the very different reworkings of European subjects by Kesu Das and Abul Hasan and in the pages contributed by Basawan and Miskin to the Baharistan manuscript of 1595. Under Jahangir (1605-27), a gifted connoisseur, this refining process continued. The art of portraiture, introduced to India by the Mughals, reached its highest development, represented here by the famous painting which the Emperor commissioned of a dying courtier. Shah Jahan (1627-58) was above all a lover of jewels and marble monumental architecture, as famously embodied in the Taj Mahal. The painting of his reign is technically excellent but frigid in tone. Pomp and protocol prevail over intimacy. New creative impulses were lacking in Mughal art after this point, and under the puritanical Aurangzeb, the imperial studio became largely dispersed. During the seventeenth century painting also flourished, under increasing Mughal influence, in the still independent Deccani Sultanates of Bijapur and Golconda.

The Hindu chiefs of the Rajput kingdoms, who served for long periods at the Mughal court or in the imperial armies, also patronized artists trained in the Mughal style. But usually, the refined foreign idiom soon became assimilated to the bolder conventions of indigenous Rajput painting. Among the most conservative patrons in this respect were the Maharanas of Mewar, the premier Rajput chiefs, who had been the last to capitulate to the Mughal power. After the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 the Mughal empire gradually broke up. His successors were ineffectual puppets or hedonists. The most enduring of them was Muhammad Shah (1719-48), known as Rangila, 'the Pleasure-loving'. Deficient as a statesman and general, he was a devoted patron of poetry, music and painting. In 1739 he endured the humiliating invasion and sack of Delhi by Nadir Shah of Persia. At the same time, the provinces of Oudh (Aadh), Bengal and Hyderabad became virtually independent kingdoms, whose rulers gave lavish patronage to artists of all kinds, many of them migrants from Delhi. The sybaritic Nawabi culture of Lucknow and Faizabad, in particular, gave rise to a prolific, if often vapid, an offshoot of late Mughal painting. Illustrations to literary romances retained their popularity, as well as conventional scenes of nobles and ladies consorting on terraces, watching dancing-girls or visiting holy men in forest groves. Some later examples of these genres were transformed by playful experiments with European effects such as perspective. Other Mughal-trained artists found their way north and westwards to the as yet isolated and traditionalist Rajput courts. In the Punjab Hills a very influential family of artists, of whom Nainsukh is the most famous, worked at Guier and other courts from around the mid-eighteenth century. They achieved a brilliant transformation of the local pictorial traditions, combining Hindu poetical and devotional feeling with Mughal observation and finesse (34-35). By the late eighteenth century the Mughal empire was moribund, and in eastern India and elsewhere artists began to turn for patronage to the officers of the British East India Company. The Europeanised style which resulted gave rise to much mediocre mass-production, but also to some exceptionally fine work. The masterly study of a sarus crane, painted by Shaikh Zain ud-Din for Lady Impey (38), follows a European convention of natural history illustration, while still recalling the Mughal tradition of bird painting going back to the time of Jahangir.