Indian creativity in miniature

Book review of Court & Courtship: Indian Miniatures in the TAPI Collection

Two enviable strands run through Court & Courtship, both of which have to do with the extraordinary people behind the making of this book. Collectors Shilpa and Praful Shah of Garden Vareli fame, the moving force behind the Textiles & Art of the People of India (TAPI) project, have collected whimsically, especially in regard to paintings where their eye was guided by the kind of textiles and costumes the painters had depicted: “jamas, paijamas, angarkhas, turbans, odhnis, patkas, qanats, floorspreads, and sunshades, woven in jamdani, muslin, brocade, mashru or painted in kalamkari, hand-block printed or embroidered in styles of the time”. For most of us who have studied miniatures based on period, or region, or the arc of seasons, ragas, romance, mythology or history, this piquant manner of collecting is inventive, to say the least. The Shahs’ other interest lay in paintings of elephants, which they ascribe to their artist-friend Howard Hodgkin, who himself collected these because “the elephant is to Indian art what the nude is to Western art. The artists were such keen observers of their physicality.”

The other reason this book is of interest is because the collection has been critically examined by J P Losty, whose former job was as curator at the British Museum and British Library where, for 34 years, he immersed himself in manuscripts and miniatures from the subcontinent. His passion and knowledge shine through the pages, especially when cross-referencing the paintings from different folios, informing the reader where they might find other pages from the illustrated manuscripts. In regard to the painting, “Tailangi ragini”, for instance, Losty tells us: “The series is now widely dispersed. Some pages are in public collections such as the Fondation Custodia, Paris, the Freer Gallery, Washington DC, the Cleveland Museum and the Museum Rietberg. Others are in private collections, including those of Sir Howard Hodgkin, Claudio Moscatelli, and Eva and Konrad Seitz. Yet, more have appeared in various sale catalogues.” The Shahs’ ragini has a Seitz provenance. 

It is the eclectic nature of the collection that makes it a smorgasbord with Mughal rubbing shoulders with Early Rajput, Basohli, Deccan, Mewar, Kishangarh, Bilaspur, Jaipur, Bundi, Kota, Datia and Guler. They include, beside the miniatures, pages from Jain manuscripts and Nathdwara pichhvais. There are paintings from Bhagavata Purana, Rasikapriya, different Ragamala and Ramayana series, Gita Govinda, Devi Mahatmya, Jaimini Bharata and Mahabharata. Where possible, Losty has attributed the names of artists or their ateliers — altogether rare in non-academic publications.

Arranged from the oldest painting in the collection (1520-25, dealing with the killing of the demon Shankhasura) to the more recent (1905-10, a celebration of Gopashtami), the 400-year span of the collection offers a range of Indian art including its peak during the Mughal era to its decline at the cusp of colonial hegemony. The arrival of European artists led to the waning of this vibrant art tradition that, earlier, had absorbed foreign influences, but could not survive the glamour of realistic oil paintings, causing a shift in patronage. 

Court & Courtship: Indian Miniatures in the TAPI Collection

Author: J P Losty

Publisher: Niyogi Books

Price: Rs 2,500

Pages: 252 

What the TAPI collection gains from being wide-ranging, it loses for not being comprehensive, something Losty reminds us “was only possible in earlier decades when there was a glut of paintings in the market as the princely collections were dispersed”. Nevertheless, it features previously unpublished works that shed new light on artistic norms, such as two horse portraits by the mid-18th century Jaipur artist, Ramjidas, “known hitherto in publications only by the animated studies of men”. 

Losty offers us intriguing insights into identifying Mughal portraits. Discussing one of Shah Jahan at the age of 40, he dispenses with the inscription identifying the subject as a certain Muhammad Mir Khan, telling us he is “too grandly dressed for him to be anyone other than a Mughal prince or emperor in the 17th century”, and further suggesting that only two princes — Shah Jahan and Dara Shikoh —arranged “their sideburns into one of two kiss-curls”. He then points to the features of the subject resembling those of Shah Jahan in portraits in the 1630s and 1640s “before his hair and beard showed any hint of grey”. Ergo. 

The descriptions of the paintings are peppered with such perceptiveness, though the sans-serif font picked by the designer makes reading difficult. I found two paintings from the Shangri Ramayana, dated 1700-10, fascinating for their contemporary visualisation, and which, Losty points out, ought to be seen for the “wonderfully humanised portraits of the monkeys”. The absence of education around traditional and classical art has been a loss to most Indians who regard Indian miniatures as one ambiguous category. While Losty’s incisive text hopes to make up for this absence of scholarship and awareness, efforts such as TAPI and its endeavour to document art — a previous book is devoted to its collection of Company paintings — remain among the more altruistic efforts at extending knowledge in these times.