islamic art at the indian exhibition, royal academy, london, november 1947 to february 1948

The Smithsonian InstitutionRegents of the University of Michigan

Islamic Art at the Indian Exhibition, Royal Academy, London, November 1947 to February1948Author(s): Basil GraySource: Ars Islamica, Vol. 15/16 (1951), pp. 145-149Published by: Freer Gallery of Art, The Smithsonian Institution and Department of the Historyof Art, University of MichiganStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4515679 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 07:18

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The Smithsonian Institution and Regents of the University of Michigan are collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Ars Islamica.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.111 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 07:18:17 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=si

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4515679?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


MUSEUMS AND EXHIBITIONS I45

many Persian and Indian miniatures, as well as a number of our fine small-size carpets. Only single, outstanding examples of metal work, ceramics, and glass remain in Berlin. Small excavation finds are still packed in boxes, partly in Berlin, partly in Celle. Owing to the destruction of the cupboards, the otherwise systematically organized collections of shards in our department became totally disarranged and partially destroyed. So far, we have not yet finished the sifting, putting in order, re- pairing and storing of this material.

A new arrangement of the galleries and the return of out-of-town deposits, due to political difficulties, is not yet feasible (fall of 1949). The rebuilding activities, which are progressing slowly because of scarcity of money and materials, have now reached that point where at least the newly glassed, window- lighted rooms can be used again, the walls and ceilings having been cleaned and painted. Only part of the cases, however, are usable. The galleries with skylights are now provisionally protected by a wood roof. Since these galleries are insufficiently lighted, they can be used for storing purposes only. The great hole in the Mshatta Hall caused by a bomb is again com- pletely closed and the destroyed brick wall rebuilt, so that the reconstruction of the shat- tered tower can soon begin. It will show some lacunae, since we estimate that about IO per- cent of the limestone blocks are lost. Af- ter extended work the badly damaged steel structure of the whole roof has been com- pletely repaired; as soon as the material is available, the provisional covering of boards and tar paper can be replaced by wire glass. Also, the radiators of the whole wing are again in order and heat can be provided.

In the hope that the work now in progress will not suffer any extended interruption, it is planned to reopen the Department in I95 I. We could then show at least the pieces available in Berlin, which will require only about

half the former exhibition area. Our special library, the archives of photographic nega- tives, reproductions and slides, as well as all the other working materials, are safe and waiting to be reinstalled in the former offices of the Department. For the time being they are still kept in the basement of the Museum. Even with the planned reopening of a part of its collections, however, the reorganization of the Islamic Department of the Berlin Museum can on no account be called completed.

ERNST KUTHNEL

ISLAMIC ART AT THE INDIAN EXHIBITION, ROYAL ACADEMY, LONDON, NOVEMBER

I947 TO FEBRUARY I948

There never can have been such an opportunity as has been offered by the Exhibition in the Royal Academy Galleries of the art of India and Pakistan to see the full range of Islamic painting in India. The other arts of Islamic India are represented mainly by ex- hibits transferred for the occasion from the Victoria and Albert Museum, but among the jades and jewelry there are some very fine pieces lent by Her Majesty Queen Mary, and the carpets from the Palace of the Maharajah of Jaipur are not only of first-class importance but make a magnificent display.

It is possible here only to outline some of the more notable groups among the 262 Islamic paintings which occupy the walls of three of the galleries and are supported by a distinguished collection of fifteen manuscripts and albums. The collections drawn upon are for the most part those in India and the United Kingdom, but some very important examples have been lent from the French National Museums and from three leading collections in the United States. The Exhibition Com- mittee made a special effort to illustrate on this occasion the little-known schools of painting which flourished outside the Mughal Do-



I46 MUSEUMS AND EXHIBITIONS

minion, especially in the kingdoms of the Deccan. Among these, the most striking as well as the earliest are three paintings which are, strictly speaking, not Islamic; for they illustrate the Hindu Rdgmalds, but at the same time bear witness to the policy of toleration and patronage of Hindu painters pursued by the ruling houses of Bijapur and Ahmadnagar. One of these has already been reproduced by H. Goetz in The Baroda State Bulletin where he attributes it, apparently with good reason, to about I570. The other two are from the Bikaner State Collection, which has also been studied by Dr. Goetz and will be fully treated in his forthcoming volume to be published by the Royal India Society. These are assigned to Ahmadnagar, apparently by comparison with a miniature reproduced by Stella Kram- risch.1 Since Dr. Goetz has not yet stated his case for assigning these paintings to two different centers, we must reserve judgment for the time being, recognizing that after the fall of Vijayanagar, its court painters are likely to have found refuge at both the courts of its two principal Muslim opponents, Husain Nizam Shah and Ali 'Adil Shah of Bijapur.

In any case Bijapur is represented at the Exhibition by a very distinguished little group of portraits, of which the two elegant miniatures illustrating a cookery book (Nos. 937 and 938) of Ibrahim 'Adil Shah II have already been published by G. Yazdani.2 A portrait of an unknown Courtier from the India Office Library, No. 934 (Fig. i), can be assigned to the latter part of IbrThim 'Adil Shah II's reign by comparison with two drawings acquired by the British Museum in 1936,3 as well

1 S. Kramrisch, A Survey of Painting in the Dec- can (London, I937), P1. XII.

2G. Yazdani, "Two Miniatures from Bijapuir," Islamic Culture, IX (I935), 2II-I6, and colored frontispiece.

3B. Gray, "Deccani Painting: the School of Bijapur," Burlington Magazine, LXXIII (1938), 75-76, and Figs. B and C.

as some later portraits. The portraits from Golconda are of a better-known type represented in many collections, but there are sev- eral other paintings which must be attributed on stylistic grounds to the schools of the Dec- can, of which the most striking are Nos. I I71 and 944, also from the India Office Library, and No. I I43 (Fig. 3) from the collection of Mr. Pendarves Lory, C.I.E. The last also is a Hindu subject, but the coloring, rich and delicate, and the architecture connect it clearly with the Deccani school.

It is well known that even after the Mu- ghal conquest of the Deccan some local schools of painting survived there, and retained some- thing of the special quality of the older Dec- cani schools. Among the criteria for attribut- ing paintings to this school would be the pref- erence for using white, fullness of drapery and richness of coloring, and predominance of blue in the palette. It is interesting to have evi- dence from Indian collections of the kind of paintings and drawings attributed to the Southern Deccani schools of Kurnool and Surapur which had been mentioned in Stella Kramrisch's X Survey of Painting in the Dec- can.4 Even farther to the south, the nawabs of the Carnatic seem to have been the patrons of a school of miniature painting at Arcot, which is represented at the Exhibition by Nos. ii59 (Fig. 4) and ii66. This school probably survived until the last nawab re- signed his dominion to the East India Com- pany in I78I.

There is one other notable Islamic drawing at the Exhibition that cannot be described as Mughal and yet does not seem to be at- tached to any of the schools so far considered. This is No. II27 (Fig. 2) and is lent by the Central Museum, Lahore. In the Lahore Mu- seum Catalogue (F. gi) it is described as "Mughal, late i8th century," in the Exhibi- tion Catalogue as "Deccani, early i8th cen-

4Kramisch, op. cit., pp. II7, I83.



FIG. 2-UNDETERMINED SCHOOL, ABOUT 1700. LAHORE, CENTRAL MUSEUM

FIG. 1-BIJAPUR. FIRST QUARTER OF SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. LONDON, INDIA OFFICE LIBRARY



J:s

FIG. 3-DECCAN, ABOUT 1700. ANDOVER, F.B.P. LORY COLLECTION FIG. 4-ARCOT, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. HYDERABAD, GOVERNMETMSU



FIG. 5-MUGHAL, MIDDLE OF SIXTEENTH CENTURY. BLOCKLEY, GLOS., COLLECTION OF FIG. 6-By MANfUR. MUGHAL, DJAHANGIR PERIO CAPT. E.G. SPENCER-CHURCHILL LONDON, E. CROFT MURRAY COLLECTION



~~~~~~~~~~~I

~~~~~~~-6

INW- FG 7'UHL BU 50 E EHI ...MD OLCINFG 8-ByDA- UHL 58 AOA TT U



MUSEUMS AND EXHIBITIONS 147

tury," but neither description seems to be ex- actly correct. The subject-a Dance of Der- vishes-and the composition are particularly fine and unusual. It is rather reminiscent of the enigmatic miniature from the Warren Hastings Collection that was reproduced by Laurence Binyon and Thomas Arnold in Court Painters of the Grand Moguls,5 which is also to be seen in the same Gallery at the Exhibi- tion (No. I202). One cannot help wondering whether this may also perhaps be from some other center with its strange union in the ex- quisitely finished predella of Hindu religious teachers, mostly the pupils of Ramananda, and its far less competent and sensitive drawing of the Dervishes' Dance, as well as its curi- ously inappropriate European background. The Lahore drawing is on plain green ground and has smooth facture, which is characteristic of the later Deccani painting, but it is far su- perior in invention to anything known from that school. It could hardly be much later than I700, but at present no local attribution can be attempted.

The most interesting new material for the study of the Mughal school at the Exhibition is to be found among the Akbari paintings. In addition to the famous dated manuscripts of 1570 from the School of Oriental Studies (No. I223) and the Bodleian Library of 1595 (No. I225), and others less well known from the Chester Beatty Collection, the Royal Asiatic Society and the Royal Collection at Windsor (No. I220), a manuscript of the Gulistdn of Sa'di, dated ggo H. (I58I A.D.)

from the Royal Asiatic Society Library, appears to be unknown to literature, yet con- tains a colophon not only stating that it was copied at Fatehpur Sikri by Husain Zarin Kalam al-Kashani, but also provided with por-

5L. Binyon and T. Arnold, Court Painters of the Grand Moguls (London, New York, etc., I92I), Pls. XVIII and XIX.

traits of the calligrapher and the young painter who illustrated the book, Manohar, who was to become so well-known an artist in the next reign. Since he appears to be no more than thirteen or fourteen years old, it is quite possible that the date is correct, and that this son of Basawan may have been born in I567 or iS68.

An equally precocious work is to be seen in a drawing signed by the even more famous artist Abu'l-Hasan (No. 820)6 and expressly stated to be executed in his thirteenth year, 1009 H. (i 6oo A.D.). This, it is true, is a direct copy of the figure of St. John from Darer's engraving of the Crucifixion from the Little Passion, dated I 5 I I A.D. (Campbell Dodgson, No. 53). He too was a son of one of Akbar's court painters, Riza (Rida ), who was the instructor in painting of the future Emperor Djahangir, and this miniature bears at the top his name as Prince, Shah Salim; and Abu'l- Hasan describes himself as "Ibn Rida Murid."' M. Ivan Stchoukine has already called atten- tion to his being a Khanazad, that is, born in the Royal Household,7 and the opportunity has been taken at the Exhibition to hang side by side his famous signed portrait of D2ahdn- gir from the Louvre (No. 9 I 7), and the Dur- bar scene from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (No. 9I8) which Stchoukine had attributed both to Abu'l-Hasan and to the same year, I 6 I 9. The attribution would seem to be confirmed by this confrontation.

Among the detached miniatures a group has been included to illustrate the early work of the school when it was still largely Persian. Among unpublished material is a Portrait (Fig. 5) described in the Catalogue (No. 854) as Turki nobleman. It still retains the

6 E. F. Wellesz, "Mughal Paintings at Burling- ton House," Burlington Magazine, XC (1948), 46, and Fig. 25.

7 I. Stchoukine, "Portraits Moghols. III," Revue des Arts Asiatiques, VII (I93I), PIs. 2, 3, 4.



I48 MUSEUMS AND EXHIBITIONS

combination of bold curvilinear design and delicate handling which characterized Bihzad's "Turkish page" and other single figure compositions dating from about the year iSoo; but the rather heavy coloring, purple and mauve predominating, as well as the rather hard treatment of the carpet, point to the continuation of the Timurid tradition in Transoxiana. The heavy shading of folds and curtains is apparently especially characteristic of the very early Mughal school, and is found in many of the Hamza-nama pages. The iden- tity of this fat young prince remains uncertain, but the features seem to be Turkish rather than Persian.

Two unpublished miniatures from a private collection (No. 883) (Fig. 7) repre- sent the well-known Tdrikh-i-Alfa manuscript, which is in the fully formed Mughal style of the late Akbar period, probably about i590.8 They have all the dramatic power of well- conceived large-scale compositions, less elabo- rate and perhaps therefore more effective than the Akbar-nama of the Victoria and Albert Museum, some miniatures of which, purposely hung alongside (Nos. 879, 882, 886), seemed richer in coloring but less simple in composition.

Although it proved impossible to obtain the loan of the famous RaZm-nama manuscript from Jaipur, miniatures were shown from two other manuscripts which must be assumed to be broken up. Two lent by the museum at Jodhpur cannot be far in date from the original manuscript of I584: while five pages were shown, out of thirty-two, which were acquired about twenty-five years ago by the Baroda State Museum. A note upon them

8 In the upper scene the wife of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid awakes from a dream foretelling her death on the morrow, which came to pass. In the lower scene the Caliph is seen praying before the Ka'ba at Mecca.

was published by E. Cohn-Wiener,9 but he was unaware that they had passed through the London sale room in I92I, when I70 miniatures were sold with the greater part of a manuscript, including the colophon, which bore the date I007 H. (I598 A.D.).'0 These are painted on a much smaller page but are by many of the same artists as in the Jaipur book, and so therefore, presumably, illuminated in the Imperial Library. They are in a style tran- sitional from the Akbari to the Djahangirl, more intimate and more unified in color. The example here reproduced (Fig. 8) by Dhanui (No. 82I) shows Sahadeva consulting the stars. The deep red screen and the glorious night sky of deepest blue serve as a foil to the group of figures which seems to revolve around the up-raised finger of the Prince.

There is no space here to go through the list of artists whose work was represented in the seventeenth-century section in the Exhibi- tion, but some idea of the opportunity for studying the work of the Mughal masters may be given by recording that there were no less than seventy signed miniatures by forty-two different artists. It was disappointing that it proved impossible to find any good flower drawings by Mansuar, but his animal paintings were represented by a distinguished group, including the now famous chameleon lent by His Majesty the King from Windsor Castle,"

9 E. Cohn-Wiener, "Miniatures of a Razm Nameh from Akbar's Time," Indian Art and Letters, XII (I938), 90-92, and Figs. I-VI.

10 (Sale) Catalogue of Persian Indo-Persian and Indian Miniatures, Manuscripts and Works of Art from various sources and Private Collections. (Lon- don: Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, October 24th- 25th, I92i), Nos. 203-79 and 3 pls.; and Maggs Bros. Bibliotheca Asiatica, I, Catalog No. 452 (Lon- don, I924), No. 252, A-M and Pls. XXXV-XL.

" Reproduced in Wellesz, op. cit., Fig. 29; and H. F. E. Visser, "Tentoonstelling der Kunst van India te Londen," Phoenix, III (February, I948), i 6, and Fig. i o.



MUSEUMS AND EXHIBITIONS I49

and by a very interesting figure painting which actually includes two charming plants. This is a portait of a musician playing the vind (Fig. 6) (No. 942) which formerly belonged to the Oriental scholar Jonathan Scott, and was recorded on a note on the reverse to have been given in I790 by him to a certain Panton Plymley. It now belongs to Mr. E. Croft Murray. It has not been possible to identify the subject of this portrait, but he may perhaps be one of the musicians trained in the famous school at Gwalior. It is just possible that he is the same Nawbat Khan Kalawant as in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts painting,'2 who is mentioned by the Emperor Djahdngir as having been one of his father's servants.'3 The

12A. K. Coomaraswamy, Catalogue of the Indian Collections in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Part VI, Mughal Painting (Cambridge, I930), p. 39, No. LXIII, and P1. XXVIII.

13 A. Rogers and H. Beveridge, Tizuk-i-Jahdng!ri or Memoirs of Jahangir (London, I909-4), I, III. The vind player formerly in the Goldschmidt Col- lection in Berlin named Parasuram, and also a ser- vant of Djahangir, is out of the question (see H. Goetz, "Indian Miniatures in German Museums and

later paintings did not perhaps present the same surprises, but it should be recorded that the well-known painting of "Prince Muham- mad Murad on an Elephant" (No. II00)14

was found to be signed by the famous artist Bichitr, and dated I030 H. (I620-2 I A.D.); which incidentally rules out the possibility of the subject being any of the sons of Shah Jahan. This is certainly one of the finest elephant drawings that has survived from the Mughal school, but it is, unfortunately, very difficult to reproduce since it is mainly drawn in gold paint. The majority of the eighteenth- century paintings were lent from English collections, and among them the most interesting group was that of the hunting scenes, which seem to have been a special feature of the reign of the Emperor Bahadur Shah.

BASIL GRAY

Private Collections," Eastern Art, II [I930], 15 I,

and Fig. 5). 14 P. Brown, Indian Painting under the Mughals,

A.D. I550 to A.D. 1750 (Oxford, I924), P1. 56, "as by Ghulam."



islamic art at the indian exhibition, royal academy, london, november 1947 to february 1948

Documents