Indian Paintings in oxford Part 8

Ladies visiting holy men at night :
Provincial Mughal style in Oudh (Lucknow or Faizabad), c.1760. Attributed to Mir Kalan Khan
Gouache with gold on paper; 24.4 x 16.3 cm
Bodleian Library (MS Douce Or.b.3, no.10)
In the eighteenth century scenes of princes or princesses visiting the abodes of holy men, either Sufi dervishes or forest-dwelling Hindu yogis, had become a commonplace of Mughal painting. Sometimes these scenes are nocturnal, allowing a modified use of European chiaroscuro. This late treatment of the subject has an air of fantasy (and unusual religious syncretism) typical of the eclectic painter Mir Kalan Khan (29). A group of ladies have come by night to honour a white-bearded Muslim divine, seated by a tent or awning with garlanded Shi'ite religious standards; the leading noblewoman kneels to offer him a dish of pomegranates. Seated beside the shaikh is a venerable yogi with coiled, matted locks and grey, ash-smeared skin. Clasping a peacock-feather fan in the manner of an attendant, he too receives the ladies' respects. The other figures are a strange and fanciful party of grey-skinned and pink-garbed yogis, male and female, some only boys. They make music, smoke or perform a curious sword dance. The youth piping on a sinuous horn probably has a European antecedent. The densely leaved trees also show Western influence. With its deep contrasts of light and shade, this is a strongly moody variation on a well-known theme.

Saif ul-Muluk and Badi' ai-Jamal with jinn attendants 
An episode from The Thousand and One Nights 
Provincial Mughal style at Farrukhabad. c.1760-70
Gouache with gold and silver on paper; 24.5 x 18.3 cm
Bodleian Library (MS Pers.b.1, f,15r)
The wonder-tales and romances of the kind enjoyed by the young Akbar (1, 4) appealed as greatly as ever to the escapist mood of the late Mughal period, and were often illustrated at the courts of Oudh and elsewhere. The fantastic tale of Saif ul-Muluk. a prince of Egypt, and Badi' al-Jarnal. a princess of the Jinn ('genies' or superhuman beings) is taken from the great Arabic compendium, The Tiiousend and One Nights. As a result of earlier events, Prince Saif ul-Muluk falls irresistibly in love with a magical portrait of the Jinn princess. Only after worldwide travels, shipwrecks, kidnappings, the deployment of a magic ring and other interludes are the couple at last united. In this happy denouement Badi-al Jamal embraces her new husband as they speed along in a gold aerial palanquin borne by monstrous but amiable jinn. Winged feinale attendants fly alongside on swift and anoeuvrable puffy clouds, fanning the royal couple and plying them with grapes, fruits and celestial liquors. The forest below bursts with blossoms and fruit, the lake with lotuses. With its stylized, broad-cheeked figures and a general crowding of detail, such work stands near the end of the Mughal tradition. Yet the artist has still responded with zest and charm to the climax of the wonderful tale.

A royal procession to Golconda; Figures in a pleasure garden Hyderabad, Deccan, c.1775
Gouache on paper; 27.5 x 33 ern: 23.6 x 33 ern
Bodleian Library (MS Douce Or.b.3, no.25, 31)
These treatments by a Hyderabad artist of a royal procession and a palace garden are enlivened by his playful experiments with perspective and borrowings from the European topographical prints that were reaching India in great numbers by the late eighteenth century. In the procession scene, a ruler riding in a bright yellow elephant howdah approaches a walled city over a long bridge with multiple gates. On either side, women bathe or wash clothes and ascetics gather in a grove. Dominated by a lofty citadel within several rings of walls, the city bears some resemblance to the old Fortress of Golconda, five miles from Hyderabad. Once prosperous and Famous for its diamond trade, Golconda had been the capital of the Qutubshahi Sultans (16)' before falling to the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb in 1687. The daily records of the early Nizams, rulers of Hyderabad From the eighteenth century, record their occasional brief stays at Golconda Fort, which was also used as a state prison.' The Nizarns ceremonious excursions to the old fortress must have inspired the present artist, who supplied much else (such as the distant hilltop towns) From his imagination. His human figures are stiff and undifferentiated, and his stabs at architectural recession are a jumble of divergent viewpoints. But this naivete is integral to his vision, along with a flair for detail and a rich Deccani palette. The idealised vision of a princely pleasure-garden is similarly overlaid with fantasy. Marble pavilions, terraces, cypresses, flower-beds and water-courses all march away to inconsistent vanishing-points. The garden is improbably peopled with a princess in the left pavilion, a prince in the right, and a European-hatted genLieman on the central terrace, all with their bevies of maids and musicians. Other ladies lounge with musical instruments in the foreground, and multi-coloured fish swim round a fountain. Stranger still are the distant European townscapes with exotic spires and towers. Another version of the subject by the same painter, in the Fondation Custodia, Paris, has an even stronger
European flavour and perspectival thrust.

Indian Paintings in oxford Part 7

Muhammad Shah with courtiers, and playing Holi with ladies and musicians
Mughal, c.1730, and 1738-39 (by Bhupal inqh).
respectively
Gouache with gold on paper; 31.2 x 46.8 ern: 34 x 45.9 cm
Bodleian Library (MS Douce Or.a.3, f.14; MS Douce Or.b.3, no.22)
In these two paintings the sybaritic Emperor Muhammad Shah (23) is shown taking his ease among
marble halls with his courtiers, ladies and musicians. Cool whites and greys dominate these palace scenes, relieved by colourful rugs and hangings placed with geometrical formality. The court no longer appears thronged by officials and attendants, as in earlier periods. The empty palatial spaces verge on a melancholy vacuity; the human figures in them can also appear remote.
There is still great refinement in the symmetrical selling in which the hookah-smoking Emperor receives his courtiers round an ornamental pool (24), the shadowy central doorway behind him flanked by uniform rows of furled blinds and wall-niches with flower-vases or fruits. The schematic rectangularity is accentuated by the bold vertical red poles (to support an awning), which also frame the figures of Muhammad Shah and four of his ministers or governors. These individuals were as corrupt and ambitious as the Emperor was incompetent. Those on the right are identified as Khan Dauran and the minister Qamaruddin Khan(?). On the left are Saadat Khan Burhan al-Mulk and (with a prominent belly) Roshan ud-Daula, a wealthy intriguer who fell into disgrace in 1732. The same symmetries of architecture and coloring are seen, from a more distanced viewpoint, in
Muhammad Shah playing Holi with ladies (25). Holi is a lively, often rowdy, rite of spring, in which coloured powder and water are hurled about with abandon. In observing this Hindu festival Muhammad Shah was reverting to the cultural syncretism of Akbar. An energetic Holi battle has clearly already been waged on the colour-stained marble terraces: the Emperor holds both a water-syringe and a powder missile at the ready. But he appears stilled and captivated by the Holi song of the singer Gulab Bai and her band.

Hunters and ladies in a landscape 
Mughal, c.1740
Gouache with gold and silver on paper; 27 x 36.3 ern
Bodleian Library (MS Douce Or.b.3, no.29)
A Mughal nobleman in hunting green, identified as Jamalullah Khan, takes aim with the matchlock resting on an attendant's shoulder and shoots a blackbuck which has been lured by tame decoy deer. Similar hunting subjects appear in Mughal painting from the Shah Jahan period onwards. Like much eighteenth century work, this is a variation on a familiar theme, in this case piquantly combined with the subject of ladies bathing. The receding hilly landscape, influenced by European models, reveals riverine vistas and distant townscapes under a sky suffused with gold. The prince's retinue waits behind a wooded rise on the left. In the center, prominently superimposed on the landscape indeed overpainted on it, and hence an afterthought is an enclosed tank with domed corner pavilions and flowering lotuses. Here women fetch water or bathe, in playful contrast to the solemn watchfulness of the hunters.

Baz Bahadur and Rupmati 

Kulu (7), Punjab Hills, c.1720 

Gouache with gold and silver on paper; 21 x 25.7 ern 

Ashmolean Museum (1958.307; Gift of Prof R. C. Oldfield) 

A cultivated prince and gifted singer, the Muslim Sultan Baz Bahadur of Malwa was devoted to the company of musicians and dancing-girls. His favourite was Rupmati, a celebrated beauty who became his constant companion. Their idyll ended when Baz Bahadur was defeated by the Mughal general Adham Khan in 1561. His harem fell into enemy hands and Rupmati took poison to escape dishonor. The love of Baz Bahadur and his Hindu mistress became a popular theme of poetry and song in late Mughal India. At the provincial Mughal courts and in the Punjab Hills the lovers were commonly depicted riding together, often on moonlit nights. Such romantic themes had a strong appeal for the Muslim and Hindu nobility alike, for whom the conventions of purdah precluded free association between the sexes. 

In this painting the lovers' horses advance in step, wild-eyed and with teeth bared. Baz Bahadur, a hawk held on his gloved wrist gazes entranced at Rupmati, who turns in the saddle to regard him. Their figures are silhouetted against a cool grey ground, around which compact, bushy trees cluster in quasi-amorous pairs, entwined with sinuous creepers and trailing lissom fronds. A strong red border, common in Rajput painting, complements the scene. 

Hunters and a tiger in a landscape 

Hyderabad. Deccan, mid-eighteenth century 

Gouache with gold and silver on paper; 21.6 x 39.5 cm 

Bodleian Library (MS Douce Or.a.3, f.8) 

The strong current of poetic fantasy in Deccani painting appears in this bird-filled landscape, with palms and out crops of heaped boulders like those around Hyderabad, under a qold-stacked sky with flying cranes. Recession and scale are treated in an ad hoc way: a tree of great size grows on the far right. Towards the centre, a large snake is coiled round a tree, while another is apparently immolated in a fire. Also enigmatic in its symbolism is the main subject of three hunters in khaki and green, whose approach seems already to have been sensed by the alert blackbuck. The prominent, pale-skinned leading figure is perhaps intended for a nobleman. He holds a flower-sprig and light stick, and, more curiously, wears a cobra entwined in his belt. The second huntsman holds two decoy deer on leashes. The third figure looks back unperturbedly at the tiger with bared fangs padding docilely behind them. This unusual scene evidently illustrates a poetic theme: the hunters, who are also the keepers of the tiger, are engaged in a hunt of an allegorical kind. A Persian verse inscribed on a sheet attached to the painting can  be translated: 'The lion [or tiger-keepers are hunting heaviness of heart.' 

Actors performing a drama Provincial Mughal style in Oudh (Lucknow or Faizabad), c.1760. Attributed to Mir Kalan Khan 

Gouache with gold and silver on paper; 

32.8 x 19.6 cm 

Bodleian Library (MS Douce Or.b.3, nO.20) 

A melodramatic entertainment is staged in a rustic grove. Above, an actor playing a young prince strikes a protective pose beside a bashfully half-veiled lady, while another warrior figure withdraws. In front of them, a female singer and musicians perform before a portly lord, also presumably part of the play since he lounges grandly against a crouching man pretending to be his pillow, and he is fanned with a leafy branch by a buffoon with a slipper tied to his turban.On the right, watching this exciting or droll goings-on, are a seated noblewoman smoking a hookah, who is given a running commentary by an old crone, and a raffish group of wine-drinkers including a bespecLacled greybeard. The mood of intoxicated abandon or deranged hilarity is further accentuated by the figures in the foreground, including some Hindu ascetics, who are sieving, pounding and no doubt consuming bhang marijuana). One thirsty bhangi receives a drink of water from a bhisti (water-carrier). Two others play on a jcw's harp and an empty clay pot. This eccentric gathering shows a witty improvisation on different genre subjects (a lady watching ail entertainment; assemblies of holy men or drug addicts), attributable to the virtuoso eclectic artist Mir Kalan Khan.