Stuart Cary Welch

Glenn D. Lowry

Milo Cleveland Beach

Imperial Painting in India, 1600-1660

The Grand Mogul

Windsor Castle. Royal Library

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (Smithsonian Institution)

Ebba Koch

Housed in England's Royal Library, THE PADSHAHNAMA ("King of the World") manuscript documents the first ten years of the reign of Shah-Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal, and contains exquisite painting and illuminations. The manuscript will be exhibited in 1997 in celebration of India's 50 years of independence from British rule. This reproduction accompanies the exhibition. 200 illus. 100in color.

The Padshahnama : an Imperial Mughal Manuscript from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle

King of the World

Beach

The Mughals - descendants of Timur and Genghiz Khan with strong cultural ties to the Persian world - seized political power in north India in 1526 and became the most important artistically active Muslim dynasty on the subcontinent. In this richly illustrated book, Dr Milo Beach shows how, between 1555 and 1630 in particular, Mughal patronage of the arts was incessant and radically innovative for the Indian context.

Mughal and Rajput Painting

One of the minor miracles of art history is the extraordinary flowering of Indian painting that began in the mid-sixteenth century under the early Mughal emperors of Indian, notably Akbar the Great. Only in recent decades has the consummate artistry of early Mughal painting come to be widely appreciated in the West. Scholars have noted the innovations--departures from both Islamic and native Indian tradition--of the new, highly distinctive school of painting, among them natural history studies, a concern for portraiture, and the documentation of contemporary court events. Milo Beach traces, with an abundance of captivating illustrations, the evolution of the Mughal style. While acknowledging the influence of Akbar's interests and changing tastes (related in turn to historical and biographical circumstances), he shows that many of the new tendencies were evident during the short reign of Akbar's father, the Emperor Humayun, whose role as patron of the arts is thereby reassessed. Beach also stresses the traditionalism of the individual painters, who only gradually changed their concepts and compositions in response to foreign influences and to imperial taste. Mughal art, he affirms, can no longer be regarded as simply a reflection of its imperial patrons. The book takes account of recently discovered material and reproduces for the first time important paintings from unpublished manuscripts and albums. It will appeal to the general reader as well as the scholar.

Early Mughal Painting

Abolala Soudavar

Rizzoli

Abou Soudavar

Overview of Iranian and Persian manuscript painting, manuscript illumination, calligraphy and drawing, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century

Selections from the Art and History Trust Collection

Art of the Persian Courts

Books have been treasured for centuries in the Islamic world, as precious objects worthy of royal admiration. This was especially true in Muslim India, where generations of Mughal emperors commissioned and collected volumes of richly illuminated manuscripts and lavishly illustrated folios. They assembled workshops of the leading artists and calligraphers to produce the books that filled their extensive libraries. Today, those works remain a vibrant part of India's cultural and artistic history in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this revised and expanded edition of his popular 1981 book, Dr Milo Beach presents the superb collection of Mughal painting in the Freer Gallery of Art. He adds many of the outstanding works that entered the collection with the opening of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in 1987. Together, the Freer and Sackler Galleries, the Smithsonian's museums of Asian art, have the distinction of being one of the world's leading repositories of Mughal art. An introductory essay examines the Mughal art of the book and traces the contributions of a succession of rulers in Muslim India. Brief artist biographies and an extensive bibliography complete this updated volume.

Paintings for the Mughal Court

The Imperial Image

B. N. Goswamy

Eberhard Fischer

Masters of Indian Painting (2-volume set) is the most comprehensive survey of Indian painting that the West has ever seen. Spanning 800 years and including some 600 artworks by more than 40 artists, it dispels the notion of anonymity in Indian art. The volumes are structured chronologically, differing from the traditional classification according to regional styles or dynastic periods.

Milo Cleveland Beach

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