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Lot Essay
Albums made for the Emperor Shah Jahan and his father Jahangir are celebrated for the refined quality of the border decoration. The borders paid tribute to the royal patrons' growing concern with the natural world - they actively encouraged artists of their ateliers to study and observe all aspects of it. The European herbaria of the early 17th century that were bought into the Mughal court by Jesuit missionaries provided ample inspiration. Under Jahangir (r. 1604-28) artists such as Manohar and Mansur were encouraged to record animals, plants and birds with great attention to detail. It is claimed in Jahangir's Tuzuk-i-Jahangiri, that more than one hundred flower paintings were done by the artist Mansur in Kashmir alone (Milo C. Beach, Eberhard Fischer and B.N.Goswamy (eds.), Masters of Indian Painting, vol.I, exhibition catalogue, New York and Zurich, 2011, p.257). Under Shah Jahan, this keen observation was applied to the borders of albums, where artists demonstrated the great precision and naturalism with which they had become practiced.
The borders that surround this miniature relate closely to those that surround the calligraphic pages of the Late Shah Jahan Album. Like ours, the Late Shah Jahan album borders are often floral, and then like ours always depict fully coloured flowering plants outlined in gold on uncoloured grounds, or all gold flowering plants on coloured grounds. Whereas in the Minto, Wantage and Kevorkian Albums no flower appears twice on a border, in the Late Shah Jahan Album, the same types of plants are often repeated. The album also has some folios where the flowers are enclosed in linked cartouches, though normally then only two types of flowers are used - showing a desire for order and symmetry (Wright, op.cit., p.115). We know that a number of these borders are associated with contemporaneous paintings that have been pasted down over pages of calligraphy - possibly whilst or just after it was in the hands of the French dealer Georges Demotte who bought the album in 1909 and was responsible for splitting and rebacking a number of the folios on thin card. This may have been one of those folios. Whether or not it is possible to solidly link this folio to the Late Shah Jahan album, it is certain that it was made for a royal album. By the reign of the Emperor Aurangzeb the focus on naturalism waned and Mughal miniature painting became increasingly stylized.
Another portrait of an elderly Akbar, dated to circa 1650, from the Late Shah Jahan Album, is in the Chester Beatty Library (Elaine Wright (ed.), Muraqqa'. Imperial Mughal Albums from the Chester Beatty Library, exhibition catalogue, Virginia, 2008, no.55, pp.366-67). Depicted there on horseback, a falcon on his right arm, the theme of the painting is certainly one of imperial might and majesty. Two other published paintings also from the Late Shah Jahan album show an aged Akbar depicted in a manner similar to ours. In one, the Emperor stands alone, sarpech in hand - a mirror image of ours, but without the sabre on which our Akbar leans (F.R.Martin, The Miniature Painting and Painters of Persia, India and Turkey, London, 1912, pl.213). The other shows Akbar leaning on the sabre but offering the sarpech to Jahangir who stands before him (Abolala Soudavar, Art of the Persian Courts. Selections from the Art and History Trust Collection, New York, 1992, no.129a, pp.311-12). All are dated to circa 1650.
The paintings of Akbar holding a sarpech - a symbol of power, prestige and wealth - seem to show a more reflective man than the majestic Akbar hunting on the Chester Beatty folio. In his portrait with Jahangir, mentioned above, he seems to be affirming the legitimacy of dynastic succession and though grey-haired and perhaps past his prime, he is still clearly a figure of power.
The borders that surround this miniature relate closely to those that surround the calligraphic pages of the Late Shah Jahan Album. Like ours, the Late Shah Jahan album borders are often floral, and then like ours always depict fully coloured flowering plants outlined in gold on uncoloured grounds, or all gold flowering plants on coloured grounds. Whereas in the Minto, Wantage and Kevorkian Albums no flower appears twice on a border, in the Late Shah Jahan Album, the same types of plants are often repeated. The album also has some folios where the flowers are enclosed in linked cartouches, though normally then only two types of flowers are used - showing a desire for order and symmetry (Wright, op.cit., p.115). We know that a number of these borders are associated with contemporaneous paintings that have been pasted down over pages of calligraphy - possibly whilst or just after it was in the hands of the French dealer Georges Demotte who bought the album in 1909 and was responsible for splitting and rebacking a number of the folios on thin card. This may have been one of those folios. Whether or not it is possible to solidly link this folio to the Late Shah Jahan album, it is certain that it was made for a royal album. By the reign of the Emperor Aurangzeb the focus on naturalism waned and Mughal miniature painting became increasingly stylized.
Another portrait of an elderly Akbar, dated to circa 1650, from the Late Shah Jahan Album, is in the Chester Beatty Library (Elaine Wright (ed.), Muraqqa'. Imperial Mughal Albums from the Chester Beatty Library, exhibition catalogue, Virginia, 2008, no.55, pp.366-67). Depicted there on horseback, a falcon on his right arm, the theme of the painting is certainly one of imperial might and majesty. Two other published paintings also from the Late Shah Jahan album show an aged Akbar depicted in a manner similar to ours. In one, the Emperor stands alone, sarpech in hand - a mirror image of ours, but without the sabre on which our Akbar leans (F.R.Martin, The Miniature Painting and Painters of Persia, India and Turkey, London, 1912, pl.213). The other shows Akbar leaning on the sabre but offering the sarpech to Jahangir who stands before him (Abolala Soudavar, Art of the Persian Courts. Selections from the Art and History Trust Collection, New York, 1992, no.129a, pp.311-12). All are dated to circa 1650.
The paintings of Akbar holding a sarpech - a symbol of power, prestige and wealth - seem to show a more reflective man than the majestic Akbar hunting on the Chester Beatty folio. In his portrait with Jahangir, mentioned above, he seems to be affirming the legitimacy of dynastic succession and though grey-haired and perhaps past his prime, he is still clearly a figure of power.