The art legacy of the subcontinent, courtesy museum holdings, public/private collections and lavish publications enjoys high visibility, but there is scant text illuminating the lives of the artists who created it. Brimming with intimate details and invigorated with new research, art historian B.N. Goswamy’s current volume, The Spirit of Indian Painting: Close Encounters with 101 Great Works, 1100-1900 attempts to piece together the human story behind the formal history of painting in the subcontinent to structure a holistic picture of the art and the times in which it was produced. Referencing the visual vocabulary and language of the painters, it tries to understand what made them paint the way they did, how they came to choose their iconography and what were the daily circumstances of their lives.

Generally the only clues available are just a series of minute inscriptions, often hidden in the details of paintings, sometimes in a deliberately humble position. Investigating if master painter Mir Sayyid Ali’s miniature painting of a young scholar is a self-portrait, as forcefully suggested by experts, or just a generic painting of a handsome youth in the Iranian tradition, Goswamy divulges that, “At the edge of the carpet on which the young man sits are cartouches inscribed with lines of Persian verses but they are either rubbed or partially obscured by the knees; had it been possible to read, one might have had a better clue to ‘understanding’ the image.”

Artists in India have traditionally been anonymous and “there are no connected accounts, no biographies, no detailed chronicles” that deal directly — or at any length — with painting in the subcontinent. Adding “some speculation,” to the “little documentation,” available Goswamy tries to “reconstruct three different but related areas — patrons, painters and the technique of painting,” but his task is fraught with complexities because “from the 11th century to the 19th, painting in India keeps running in different courses, at different paces, with varying energies.” A style did not die to be replaced by another, rather “several streams ran parallel to each other.”

Miskin, one of the most gifted painters in Emperor Akbar’s court, “was the subject of a 1928 study by Wilhelm Staude, who attributed to him a large number of paintings and analysed his style. As many as 86 paintings have been attributed to him so far, based purely on stylistic considerations, even though not a single one bears his signature or is dated.”

A volume that puts together the human story behind the history of painting in the subcontinent by referencing what made artists paint the way they did, and how they chose their iconography

The great mural cycles at Ajanta or Bagh ended in the 7th century but it is around the 11th century that some kind of narrative loosely bracketed into styles or schools attributed to Pala and Jain manuscripts emerges. It was “the beginning of painting in miniature on small surfaces — palm leaf first, followed by paper in the 14th century — works of art turned into objects that could be owned and transported.” From surviving colophons men of means, power and influence, like princes, priests and affluent merchants emerge as patrons but identities of the concerned artists keep lurking in the shadows for another 500 years. “From the 16th century one enters more secure ground, for dated materials come one’s way,” informs Goswamy, adding that “Of all the periods, or schools, of Indian painting, it is the Mughals which appear to be the richest in information.” Together with the Mughal school — both contributing to it and taking from it — rose the equally celebrated Rajput school, with its two major expressions in Rajasthan and in the Pahari areas. “In the same period, in southern India, painting with a Deccani slant begins to flourish — with major centres in the Sultanates of Ahmednagar, Bijapur and Golconda. The coming of the British leads to the birth of what has been called the ‘Company School’ — Indian artists working mainly for British patrons, officers of the East India Company.”

The Mughals as discriminating patrons of art gave an unprecedented fillip to painting, and one of Akbars nauratans, Abul Fazal’s evidence on the subject is overwhelming. Goswamy’s book references the Mughal emperors’ memoirs and their court historians’ accounts profusely to paint colourful images of their refined taste and art patronage. Unlike brilliant art specimens of later centuries, there are very few examples of court painting during the Sultanate period. Goswamy brings some clarity to this lesser known brief, complex and incomplete chapter of Sultanate painting by referencing J.P. Losty’s research on such works as the Bustan, Iskandarnama, Khamsa of Amir Khusrau and the Chandayan manuscripts as well as his own inferences from Sultan Feroze Tughlaq’s Futuhat-i-Feroze Shahi.

“A great deal of work of different kinds — hieratic, iconic and canonical on the one hand, and non-canonical and ‘secular’ on the other — belongs to the Sulatanate period, meaning in the time after the coming of Islam to India and the establishment of centres of Islamic power, but before the arrival of the Mughals. This needs to be distinguished from what is generally referred to as ‘Sultanate painting’, which consists essentially of works done for the Sultans or for highly placed patrons who were rooted in Islam, who valued classics of the Islamic world and commissioned them,” he writes and remarks that “Orthodox Islam was in general distrustful towards any kind of figural work in painting and yet we see patronage from the Muslim elite at this time. There is also a coming together, on occasion, of different streams of art — Hindu, Buddhist, Jain on the one hand and Iranate on the other. These two tensions, of philosophies and styles colliding and merging, is what makes Sultanate painting particularly fascinating.”

The now dispersed Jainesque Sultanate Shahnama, of uncertain origin, undated but painted close to 1450 is, “Possibly the most exciting — intriguing — of all Sultanate manuscripts”. Its Persian text is selected from Firdausi’s great classic and the calligraphy and late owner’s seal suggest that the patron was a Muslim. The uneasy merger of other styles (Persian, Inju, Mamluk etc) with local aesthetics based in two different artistic traditions and the visual delight they offer point to an even earlier trace of foreign influences in subcontinental art. Formerly initiation of such stylistic mixes was attributed to the Mughal era.

Goswamy’s intention in this volume is to bring readers into close contact with Indian painting, and “to make them feel the texture of its form and thought, to taste its essence or rasa.” Other than historical, descriptive and anecdotal material in the 122-page introductory essay, ‘A Layered World’, he also explains the meaning of time and space in Indian paintings. Revealing that in Indian paintings artists were “completely at home with the notion of time as manipulable and elusive,” Goswamy says this fluidity could be cyclical or diagonal. Within the same frame, in the Hindu Rajput Jain tradition, the same figure will appear frequently a few times; a man entering the door, then sitting in his chamber or moving away. This continuous pictorial rendering contrasts with the European notion of painting time as arrested action. The more you think about, the more you start wondering what is real, what is unreal. It gives you a different perspective on life, and the life hereafter. Likewise, projection of space in old Indian painting is conditional as the ways of looking at things are infinite in number, unlike the Western notion of a scientific, fixed point of perspective. Landscape with natural scenery as a dominant subject is again a Western approach — in Indian painting human action is important and nature is made to echo human emotions. Portraiture too, as understood in the Western context, attained prominence much later, during the reigns of Jehangir and Shahjehan.

In the second segment independent stories on over a hundred carefully selected works, spanning nearly a thousand years, ranging from Jain manuscripts and Pahari and Mughal miniatures to Company School paintings are arranged, not chronologically, but in four different groups.

The paintings under ‘Visions’ visualise unseen sights and events which have for long been part of our ‘awareness’ and imagination. The ‘Observation’ section dwells on sights, people and scenes, seen or imagined by the painter, and some of them especially commissioned by the patron. The paintings in the section titled ‘Passion’ are largely those inspired by poetic texts like the Gita Govinda, Sur Sagar etc with a few from the Ragamala series. Intense, private and quiet, the works in the ‘Contemplation’ series are relatively unusual and thus especially striking.

Describing the family (gharana) as the basis of style Goswamy also carefully teaches us the difference between paintings produced in the family workshops of the Rajput or Pahari courts, where the artists worked at home and all generations lent a hand, and that of the Mughal ateliers, where the best talent from across the empire was deployed under the strict discipline of a master ustad. Court styles could vary hugely, depending on who was at work but each family of painters, he suggests, “had its own kalam … much as a gharana of musicians had its own style in music.” Combining evidence from inscriptions on the back of miniatures with 18th-century pilgrim records kept in the Ganges holy town of Haridwar he has reconstructed the entire family network of arguably the greatest of all Indian painter families: that of Pandit Seu and his sons, Nainsukh and Manaku, as well as their numerous artist grandchildren.

Album paintings were meant to be held in the hand and viewed up close to get the feel of the art and its chromatic brilliance. At the end of his note on Manaku’s 1740 rendition of the Hiranyagarbha, the Cosmic Egg, the source of all creation in Vedic philosophy, the author writes: “when one sees the painting laid flat, the egg appears a bit dark, almost dominated by browns. It is when you hold the painting in your hand, as it was meant to be, and move it ever so lightly, that it reveals itself: the great egg begins to glisten, an ovoid form of the purest gold; true hiranya, to use the Sanskrit term for the precious metal.”

An account of a late 18th century Indian painter, who clearly frustrated with his patron, scribbled a small prayer in the margins of a manuscript on which he was working: “Protect me O Lord, from oil, from water, from fire and from poor binding,” he wrote. “And save me from falling into the hands of a fool”. This is a rare, witty glimpse into an artist’s personal feelings.

Behind glass panes in museums, or in private collections, most of the paintings in this book can no longer be viewed directly. With different folios of a single series/albums often scattered across the world in different holdings, the works have also lost their original context. It is books like these that emerge as invaluable repositories of information and connection with these masterpieces. Written in an engaging storytelling style this volume will delight the casual reader and captivate the connoisseur.

The reviewer is a Karachi-based freelance writer and art critic.

The Spirit of Indian Painting: Close
Encounters with 101 Great Works, 1100-1900
(ART)
By B.N. Goswamy
Thames & Hudson, UK
ISBN:978-0670086573
584pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, September 11th, 2016