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The Mughal school of painting runs parallel to the Mughal dynasty. It came into prominence in the sixteenth century, during the reign of king Akbar. It reached its zenith under the patronage of Akbar’s grandson – king Jahangir. The reign of the latter’s successor king Shah Jahan saw its decline and finally under the unsympathetic Aurangzeb it breathed its last.
Indeed, as a school of art, the duration of Mughal painting was a limited one, extending only over approximately two and a half centuries. Actually, it has often been referred to as not exactly a school, but rather an exceptionally brilliant phase in Indian art. The roots of Mughal painting lay in Samarkand and Herat, where under the patronage of the Timurid kings, Persian art reached its apogee.
Babur, a descendant of Timur, and the founder of the Mughal dynasty, speaks of a person named ‘Bihzad’ as ‘a most eminent painter’. It was with the descendants of Bihzad and the deep personal interest taken by Akbar, the grandson of king Babur, that the Mughal school of art started off with a flourish. Regarding the aesthetics of Mughal painting, one exceptional feature is its commitment to realism or the delineation of likeness.
The subjects were majorly drawn from the extremely rich and magnificent court life under the Mughals. That this was a flourishing art during Akbar’s reign is borne out by the list of more than forty painters found in a book written during his era. However, it was under Akbar’s son Jehangir that Mughal painting gained its highest peaks.
Not only portraits and hunting scenes, but also scientific studies of botany and natural history found favor with the artists under the king’s support. The Mughal painters were asked to paint unusual specimens of flora and fauna in their exact likeness. Some of these skilfully painted pictures have survived till today, narrating to us the uniqueness of those rich times.
Under the reign of Shajahan, son of Jahangir, the Mughal school of painting entered its decline. The actual treatment of the subject matter is replaced with more decorative embellishments like rich flowery borders etc. Under Shahjahan architecture scaled new peaks (Taj Mahal etc.), but painting deteriorated. Finally, with the rise of Aurangzeb, Mughal painting breathed its last.
FAQs
A distinct sense of naturalism in the composition separates Mughal art from other schools of Indian paintings, lending it a rich appearance and realism. An understanding of perception, depth, visual reality and a balance between hidden meaning and observable form in the composition are some other characteristics of Mughal artworks.
Mughal art is praised worldwide for the degree of inspiration it draws from Indian culture and the subsequent impact it has on the regional artworks in India. As a school of painting that was patronized by the royal court, Mughal paintings are also a direct and unmatched source of history for the Mughal period and assist historians in understanding the socio-political and cultural context of medieval India from the 16th century to 19th century CE.
Coming from a religious context, i.e. Islam, where representing the human form was forbidden, the Mughals embraced the socio-cultural and artistic traditions of India, and this adaptability of the Mughals contributed to the emergence of a school of Indian painting, which was unique, aesthetically endowed and enriched by different artistic streams.
Inspired by the traditional Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain artworks, Persian art, and European elements, Mughal paintings grew into a formidable art form. Even when the Mughal court in Delhi weakened with the arrival of the British, the elements of Mughal paintings remained intact in the regional kingdoms where they mated with local art forms and birthed newer Indian regional styles, which have gained a huge fandom in the contemporary art world.
