First Impressions: The Indian Portrait 1560-1860

by Kathryn Hadley

‘The Indian Portrait’ opens today, March 11th, at the National Portrait Gallery. Bringing together 60 works from international private and public collections, including the V&A, the British Library, the Bodleian Library, Oxford, the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, New York, and the Institut Néerlandais in Paris, the exhibition charts the history of the Indian portrait over three centuries. The diversity of the portraits on display and the insights which they provide into the history of the Mughal Empire are fascinating.

The portraits are, first of all, hugely diverse, varying in subject matter, size, style and technique. They range from scenes of court life to individual portraits which depict Mughal emperors, courtiers and holy men, as well as women and Europeans living in India. The first Indian portraits date to the reign of the third Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556-1605), who commissioned a series of portraits both of himself and of his courtiers. Abu’l Fazl, the historian of Akbar’s reign, recorded this innovation in Mughal court painting in his chronicle the Akbarnama: ‘portraits [surat] have been painted of all His Majesty’s servants, and a huge book [ketab] has been made’. Shah Jahan commissioned a similar ‘official manuscript’ of his reign, the Padshahnama (‘The Book of the Emperor’), which features 44 illustrations depicting events from his life. Another grandiose official portrait is the six-foot life-size image dating to 1617 of the fourth Emperor Jahangir holding a globe, which is believed to be the largest painting to come from the Mughal Empire.

However, the display also provides more intimate glimpses of the Mughal emperors, as well as moving insights into the lives of their courtiers. Alongside the stylised images of Akbar presented in the Akbarnama, for example, there is also a simple black and white ink drawing of the emperor which captures his mood and personality. Particularly sombre and moving are the drawing and accompanying finished painting of ‘Inayat Khan, one of Jahangir’s attendants, in his last days. The portrait was commissioned by Jahangir who recorded in his memoirs on October 10th, 1618, that ‘Inayat Khan ‘was addicted to opium, and when he had the chance, to drinking as well […] He appeared so low and weak that I was astonished… As it was a very extraordinary case I directed painters to take his portrait’.

The exhibition also reveals the evolution of Indian portraiture over three centuries, its richness and its complexity; it both influenced art in regions which gradually fell under Mughal control and was, in turn, influenced by European and British traditions. Art in the Deccan sultanates, which included the five Islamic kingdoms of Ahmadnagar, Berar, Bidar, Bijapur and Golconda on the Deccan Plateau in south-central India, became increasingly influenced by Mughal traditions as the region was conquered by the Mughal emperors from 1596 to 1686. The sultans increasingly commissioned portraits of themselves similar to those of the Mughal emperors. By 1614, the independent Hindu Rajput kingdoms of Rajasthan and the Hill (Pahari) region north of Delhi had also been incorporated into Mughal territory. The conquered kingdoms similarly absorbed aspects of Mughal culture, which is reflected in portraits of time such as that of Kunwar (‘prince’) Anop Singh of the principality of Devgarh in the powerful Mewar kingdom riding with a falcon.

But Indian portraiture was also influenced by British and European traditions and increasingly so in the 18th and 19th centuries as India came under British control. A portrait of Jahangir triumphing over poverty believed to date to 1625 reveals, for example, how Indian portraiture increasingly came to incorporate elements of western art: two European cherubs are placing a crown on the emperor’s head, whilst a third is handing him the arrows which he is using to kill poverty. During the British period, Indian artists were employed to produce paintings of local scenes and people and some also received patronage from employees in the East India Company. Portraits from this period include a curious and amusing depiction of William Fullerton (c.1725-1805), a surgeon with the East India Company, who is portrayed in a totally Indian way reclining against a bolster on a terrace and smoking a huqqa.

A colourful, detailed, beautiful, and at times grandiose, insight into the history of the Mughal Empire from 1560 to 1860.


The Indian Portrait 1560-1860
March 11th – June 20th
National Portrait Gallery
St Martin’s Place
London WC2h 0HE
Telephone: 0207 306 0055
www.npg.org.uk

Images:

- Page from the Padshahnama: Jahangir receives Prince Khurram at Ajmer, Mughal, attributed to ‘Abid c.1635, Royal Collection

- Drawing of Akbar, c. 1595, The British Library

- Kunwar Anop Singh of Devgarh riding with a falcon, Devgarh, Mewar, Rajasthan, attributed to Bakhta, c.1776, Museum Rietberg Zurich. Gift of Dr. Carlo Fleischmann Foundation and acquisition

- William Fullerton seated on a terrace, Patna, Bihar, by Dip Chand, Victoria and Albert Museum

For further information on the Mughal Empire, read our article The Mughal Dynasties

To read more about the history of India, visit our India focus page.

Visions of India past and present

by Kathryn Hadley

Colourful, chaotic and charming; India is also an enchanting and overawing country of extremes, with an immensely rich history and cultural diversity. Vasco de Gama landed on the Malabar coast in the south-western state of Kerala in 1498. The prospects of developing trade links with India sparked considerable European interest in India. Throughout the sixteenth century, Dutch, French, Portuguese, Danish and English traders increasingly set up coastal trading centres exporting commodities such as textiles, sugar, indigo, saltpetre, tea and opium.

The British East India Company was founded on December 31st 1600 following Queen Elizabeth I’s signature of a Royal Charter, which granted a group of London merchants a monopoly of all trade East of the Cape of Good Hope and West of the Straits of Magellan for an initial period of fifteen years. The Company first landed in Surat (Gujarat) on the East coast approximately two hundred kilometres North of Bombay in 1608 and gradually established trading posts in Madras (1639), Bombay (1660) and Calcutta (1690). Perceptions of India in Europe at the time were largely based on accounts and paintings by European travellers who published or exhibited their works upon their return.

How did the first Europeans arriving in India view and depict the new world which they discovered? An exhibition currently on show in Mumbai attempts to answer this question. The show at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya museum provides an important insight into European views of India from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century. It is organised in collaboration with London’s Victoria and Albert Museum from which many of the paintings by British artists are on loan. The display includes works by both professional and amateur artists, by artists who travelled to India to paint first hand accounts, as well as by artists in Europe who based their depictions on Mogul works of art, written accounts by European travellers or who copied other artists’ works.

Artists painted scenes of some of the architectural and natural wonders of India which were entirely unknown to their European publics. However, in their depictions of such novel and previously unknown subjects they remained influenced by the changing artistic influences popular in Europe at the time. The chronological display of paintings, prints and sketches highlights the evolution of European artistic trends, from Romanticism from the second half of the eighteenth century onwards, to the Realism of the end of the nineteenth century.

European painters first began to travel to India to paint first hand accounts of the landscapes and monuments which they visited in the eighteenth century. William Hodges (1744-1797) was the first English professional landscape painter to travel to India. He had previously accompanied Cook on his second voyage to the Pacific from 1772 to 1775. Hodges was granted permission to travel to India by the East India Company and arrived in Madras in 1780. He travelled for three years around the North of India and upon his return to London in 1783, he published a collection of 44 prints under the title Select Views in India.

Six years later, two other British artists, Thomas Daniell (1749-1840) and his nephew William Daniell (1769-1837), followed in Hodges’ footsteps. They arrived in Calcutta in 1786 where they set up a printing studio and then embarked on a tour of northern India. Returning to Calcutta in 1791, they then toured southern India for a further eight months. Their unprecedented collection of 144 prints was published in England between 1795 and 1808 under the title Oriental Scenery and saw considerable commercial success.

From the 1860s onwards, with the arrival of photography, European representations of India gradually changed. Subjects shifted from landscapes and architectural wonders to depict everyday and ‘real’ life, including the Indians themselves and their customs. This evolution of European artistic influences is particularly prominent in the works of John Lockwood Kipling (1837-1911) and John Griffiths (1837-1918). Both artists arrived in Bombay in 1864 where they were appointed to teach at the Bombay Jeejeebhoy School of Art. Griffiths became Principal of the school in 1865; Kipling was commissioned by the British government in 1870 to tour the North-West Provinces and to sketch the Indian craftsmen of the area. In 1875, he became Principal of the Mayo School of Arts in Lahore in British India (now the National College of Arts in Pakistan).

For more on British views of India, read our article
British Views of India

Here are the full details of the exhibition in Mumbai:

Indian Life and Landscape: paintings and drawings from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century
Until February 8th
Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (formerly Prince of Wales Museum of Western India)
159/161 Mahatma Gandhi Road
Fort, Mumbai 400 023

A fascinating insight into the initial perceptions of the unknown and alien country and culture which European travellers to India discovered, into the evolution of such perceptions and into how the visions of European artists in turn shaped views of India in Europe.

Black Death treasures of a Jewish community go on show

by Derry Nairn

The Wallace Collection is to put on show the first British exhibition of jewellery hidden by German Jews before 17th century pogroms. The collection, to go on show in February, includes the first two examples of Jewish wedding rings.

Here's an extract from the press release

As the Black Death laid waste to vast swathes of Europe, wiping out a third of the population, terrified local people, unable to find a cause for the suffering, searched for a scapegoat. Suspicion and fear immediately fell upon the Jewish population, who were accused of poisoning the wells. Many Jews buried their most precious belongings, hoping to return later, but as a result of ensuing large-scale pogroms throughout Europe, never returned to reclaim them. 1000 people were killed on a single day in Erfurt - 2 March 1349.

As well as shedding new light on another dark chapter in Europe’s history, the objects illuminate both the lives of the Jewish communities who buried them and the wider picture of medieval fashion and craftsmanship. Many pieces are very intimate and extremely personal. As well as the wedding rings, the exhibition will include ‘double cups’ used in the wedding ceremony and betrothal gifts. These add an even more poignant and tragic perspective to the story.

90th anniversary of the Armistice - events

by Kathryn Hadley

To mark the 90th anniversary of the Armistice, a series of ceremonies, remembrance days, exhibitions and film festivals are being held in France, Spain and the UK. Here is just a small selection…

• In Memoriam at the Imperial War Museum based on the personal stories of 90 individuals who fought or were involved in the war.
• Remembered, in Shrewsbury, a photographic exhibition of some of the memorials and cemeteries in the care of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
• Last Post at the Churchill Museum is about the role of the Post office during the war.
• A World War One Day is being organized at the National Museum of Ireland on November 8th
• The Imperial War Museum is hosting an evening dedicated to poetry and to the memory of war on November 11th.

In France, numerous ceremonies will be held on November 11th, including a ceremony at the British Thiepval Memorial.

• Photographies de l’enfer et du chaos: a display of photographs taken by the French, British, Canadian, Australian and German armies during the war.
• Two exhibitions at the Historial de la Grande Guerre at Péronne about the depiction of the war by German artists and the commemoration of the war today.
• Orages de papier 1914-1918, in Strasbourg, about the role of the media during the war.
• The 19th edition of the Festival International du Film d’Histoire at Pessac is devoted to the First World War and the Invalides is organizing a screening of European and American films about the war.
• In Madrid, the exhibition 1914! The Avant-Garde and the Great War considers the influence of the First World War on the development of early avant-garde international art movements.

For a full list, visit our First World War events page.

Or for background information, visit our new First World War page, which includes a selection of related articles

History in the News: Assassins’ weapons on display

by Tom Bowers

A pistol and bomb used by the assassins of Franz Ferdinand are to go on display in Britain for the first time. The assassination of the Austrian Archduke and his wife in Sarajevo on June 28th, 1914 sparked the First World War. The items are part of the exhibition In Memoriam: Remembering the Great War at the Imperial War Museum, London, from September 30th.

In Memoriam, which runs until September 6th 2009, marks the 90th anniversary of the Armistice using evidence and memorabilia to highlight notable events in the conflict. Other artefacts on display include the Victoria Cross awarded to one of its youngest recipients, Jack Cornwell, who died at the Battle of Jutland; Wilfred Owen’s Military Cross; and a wreath given to David Lloyd George after the Treaty of Versailles.

For more info on the exhibition, just click here.