1

MURSHIDABAD PAINTING 1750-1820

©J.P. Losty 2014

EARLY WORKS

No paintings definitely associated with the Murshidabad court can be identified

before the latter part of the reign of Nawab ‘Alivardi Khan (r. 1740-56). A few

portraits suggest through their subject matter that a court style derived from the

imperial Delhi style was in existence from about 1750. After a brief flowering of only

twenty years, the court style collapsed in the absence of traditional patronage and

Murshidabad artists had to learn a new style influenced by the English picturesque

movement for their new patrons, the British, in Murshidabad itself and in Kolkata.1

Fig. 1. Nawab Husain Quli Khan, Naib Nazim of Dhaka. Murshidabad, 1750-54. Opaque watercolour

heightened with gold and silver on paper. 40.7 x 34.2 cm. Victoria & Albert Museum, London,

D.1202-1903.

‘Alivardi Khan had for ten years to contend with the annual marauding expeditions of

the Marathas before around 1750 finding time to patronise artists. The sack of Delhi

in 1739 by Nadir Shah and subsequent similar disasters led to the disruption of the

imperial style. The departure of the heir-apparent ‘Ali Gauhar to the east in 1758 in

1 The development of the early style was charted by Robert Skelton in a masterful paper in Marg in

1956, while the present author drew attention to some formal concerns of Murshidabad artists in the

same journal in 2002.

2

an attempt to restore imperial authority and the murder of his father ‘Alamgir II (r.

1754-59) the following year by his vizier led to an almost complete exodus of artists.

Artists such as Nidhamal, Faqirallah and his son Faizallah, Mir Kalan Khan and Mihr

Chand resettled at the apparently more peaceful Avadhi courts at Lucknow and

Faizabad, while Purannath also known as Hunhar II, Nidhamal’s brother, seems to

have gone further east to Patna. No documentation exists for any such artists actually

resettling in Murshidabad either then or earlier. Certainly the coldness and formality

of the early court Murshidabad style would suggest that it was formed by artists

originally in the circle of Govardhan II in Delhi in the 1730s and 1740s.2 Already,

however, in the earliest productions from the Murshidabad studio there are distinct

changes from the imperial style.

A court portrait from about 1750-54 of Husain Quli Khan (d. 1754), naib nazim in

Dhaka, is typical of the early court style (fig. 1). While its overall white tonality

associates it with the imperial style, its use of an opulent gold background and lavish

use of silver are something very new and in striking contrast to the white. The subject

is shown as in so many imperial portraits seated on a terrace under a white shamiana

supported by silver poles and smoking from a gold hookah ornamented with jewelled

flowers. He is attended by two men, one with the silver stick of office, the other

holding a morchhal. Characteristic of the developing style are the stiffly upright

attendant figures, squatter than their imperial equivalents, and the heavily but

smoothly modelled faces. The whole strikes a note of opulent vulgarity, but the

concern with perspective indicates an artist influenced by the imperial style when

Chitarman was the master of the studio.3 Noteworthy here is the meticulous depiction

of the flowers in the garden at the foot of the painting. The composition of a formal

portrait on a terrace under a canopy was one that was often reused in Murshidabad

painting, but the extravagant gold background was abandoned fairly early. A

similarly opulent but slightly less elaborate portrait without the canopy is of Saulat

Jang (d. 1756), who as was the case with his two brothers was both the nephew and

son-in-law of ‘Alivardi Khan.4 The Nawab’s three daughters were married to their

cousins, the sons of the Nawab’s brother Hajji Mirza Ahmad. They were by all

accounts far less upright or efficient than their father-in-law, but were favoured with

the most important official positions as deputies (naib nazim) to the Nawab in the

great provincial cities of the suba. Despite their official posts, they remained mostly

in the capital and formed the nucleus of the Nawab’s private society along with his

favourite grandson Siraj al-Daula.

2 For Govardhan II, see Falk and Archer 1981, nos. 168-74, and Losty and Roy 2012, figs. 108, 138-45.

3 For Chitarman, see McInerney 2011.

4 In the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, see Hurel 2011, no. 195.

3

Fig. 2. Nawab Alivardi Khan of Bengal with his nephews and grandson. Murshidabad, 1755-56.

Opaque watercolour heightened with gold on paper. 38 x 27.5 cm. Victoria & Albert Museum,

London, D.1201-1903.

Two of the nephews and the grandson are depicted with the Nawab in a more

elaborate version of the earlier terrace portrait composition (fig. 2). The Nawab is

handing a sarpech to his nephew and son-in-law Saulat Jang, beside whom is the

Nawab’s grandson and heir Siraj al-Daula (r. 1756-57), watched by his other nephew

Shahamat Jang (d . 1755). The terrace part of the scene is drawn with considerable

feeling for naturalistic perspective, of the sort that artists such as Chitarman had been

investigating in the imperial studio in the 1720s. The figures on the left can be seen to

occupy their own spaces: that of the Nawab on his carpet viewed in perspective is

particularly happy.5 Political considerations have raised the Nawab’s bejewelled

grandson and heir Siraj al-Daula (r. 1756-57) on to the same plane as his grandfather

thereby impinging on his neighbour’s space. This as well as his apparent age (he was

born in 1733) suggest a date of 1756-57 for the painting during his brief reign. The

stiff attendant figures now have their heads slightly thrown back and are of relatively

small stature, features which are increasingly found in this school. We note also the

use of drab colours with browns and olive greens set against white, the whole

reflecting an artist whose hard formal style with its cold pallor and emphasis on

dignity and manly action is suited, as Skelton pointed out, to the austere character of

Nawab ‘Alivardi Khan. This is even more apparent in another portrait of ‘Alivardi

5 Murshidabad and Avadhi artists’ developing approaches towards naturalism in their paintings have

been charted in Losty 2002.

4

Khan, this time showing him out hunting in a vigorous fashion despite his advanced

age (fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Nawab Alivardi Khan hunting. Murshidabad, 1750-55. Opaque watercolour heightened with

gold on paper. 24.8 x 32.7 cm. Victoria & Albert Museum, London, D.1199-1903.

The mounted Nawab is dramatically poised to leap from the bank of a river into the

water after his hounds in hot pursuit of a fleeing blackbuck. It is the landscape,

however, which is the most remarkable element of this painting, for it is intended to

be viewed as a naturalistic one observable from the viewer’s eye level in the European

manner rather than from the high bird’s eye viewpoint of the Indian tradition. The

same drab palette as in fig. 3 is used creatively lightening to an almost pure white to

suggest a landscape receding in aerial perspective towards a horizon where the blues

of sky, water and hills are almost indistinguishable. Dark pine trees crown the banks

and soar up out of the picture frame. The model for such a landscape can only have

been a mid-18th century European watercolour or painting, displaying the principle of

the transition from dark to light from foreground to background which was developed

in the 18th century theory of the picturesque. Direct evidence that artists had indeed

studied such naturalistic European landscapes is provided by an Italianate landscape

study by an unknown eastern Indian artist from about 1750 either from Bengal or

Avadh.6

The brief reign of Siraj al-Daula (r. 1756-57) was scarcely long enough to have a

serious impact on the Murshidabad style other than that his handsome features (he

was reputedly the handsomest man in Bengal) became briefly a paradigm for

6 British Library Johnson Album 62, 1 (Losty 2002, fig. 9).

5

representations of ragas and nayakas in Murshidabad painting.7 The East India

Company put Mir Ja’far (r. 1757-60, 1763-65) on the masnad of Bengal in 1757, but

quickly became dissatisfied with him. He was dethroned by the Company in 1760 in

favour of his son-in-law Mir Qasim (r. 1760-63), who was to prove even more

unsatisfactory from the Company’s point of view.

IMPERIAL INFLUENCES

Nawab Mir Ja’far is shown in a sumptuous painting c. 1760 seated with an official

and with standing attendants (fig. 4).

Fig. 4. Mir Jafar with an official on a terrace in a garden. Murshidabad or Patna, c. 1760. Opaque

watercolour heightened with gold on paper. 33.6 cm x 28.2 cm. San Diego Museum of Art, 1990.428,

Edwin Binney 3rd

collection.

In contrast to the painstaking depiction of flowers in fig. 1, here they are much more

impressionistically rendered in the garden. This is a feature found in other

Murshidabad paintings as well (see fig. 8). This painting with its inscription W.F.

1764 was in the collection of William Fullarton (c. 1724-1805) the Company’s

surgeon to the British stationed at Patna, all of whose paintings bear the same

inscription and are connected stylistically with Murshidabad and Patna.8 Fullarton,

the only survivor of the massacre of the British in Patna in 1763 at the instigation of

Mir Qasim during the war with the Company, must have owed his life to his

friendship with many of the local Mughal notables of Patna and must have known Mir

7 Skelton 1956, fig. 4.

8 Archer 1992, pp. 37-38.

6

Ja’far. In contrast to the stumpyness of the figures and the drab colours found in

Murshidabad painting of the 1750s, here we have a distinct artistic influence from

Delhi in the brilliantly coloured sunset sky, otherwise unknown in Murshidabad

painting, the greater control of perspective, and the elongation of the figures. It has

been suggested that the Delhi and Lucknow artist Purannath known as Hunhar II was

the artist; he is thought to have been in Patna about this time (see fig. 5).9 Certainly

the style of this painting resembles one of his few signed works from his Delhi period,

especially the arrangement of the terrace and of the figures and the play of dark and

light cloud effects against a gold streaked with white and colours.10

Such effects are

also found in the work of Hunhar’s brother Nidhamal, who is not known to have gone

further east than Faizabad.11

On the other hand we know very little about precisely

when Delhi artists resettled in the eastern courts and Nidhamal may very well have

gone along with his brother; they certainly seem to have used each other’s charbas

for minor attendant figures. The signature of the artist Bahadur Singh on a portrait of

the Emperor Bahadur Shah I in the Victoria & Albert Museum, that was also in

Fullarton’s collection in 1764, suggests that he too was in Patna briefly before ending

up in Lucknow.12

Some of the more ambitious landscape paintings from Murshidabad suggest

familiarity with the developed imperial landscape style in the mid-century. Large

landscape paintings with the Emperor hunting with favourites in the foreground and

the background receding via hills in the middle ground to distant views of further hills

with the rest of the imperial entourage marching through became popular towards the

end of the reign of Muhammad Shah (r. 1719-48), and also in that of his successor the

ill-fated Ahmad Shah (r. 1748-54).13

9 McInerney 2002, p. 22, n. 27.

10 Sotheby’s New York 20-21 September 1985, lot 382, a portrait of an emperor on a terrace signed by

Hunhar. 11

The composition of fig. 5 closely resembles Nidhamal’s in his portrait of Amir Khan ‘Umdat al-

Mulk (Seyller and Seitz 2010, no. 21), previously published erroneously as by Hunhar (McInerney

2002, fig. 14). 12

V & A D.1025-1903, unpublished, but see Skelton 1956, p. 17. 13

E.g. McInerney 2002, fig. 15; Losty and Roy 2012, fig. 109.

7

Fig. 5. Mir Jafar preceded by his son Miran on a hunting expedition. Signed by Purannath known as

Hunhar II, Mughal style at Patna, c. 1760. Opaque watercolour heightened with gold on paper. 42 x

63.5 cm. Victoria & Albert Museum, London, I.M. 13-1911.

Another painting in William Fullarton’s collection in Patna in 1764 is a processional

scene portraying Mir Ja’far again engaged in a hawking expedition on horseback with

his son Miran (fig. 5). It follows the format of these imperial landscape paintings in

its isolation of the principal figures in a processional scene in the foreground with a

long procession of the retinue depicted in the background among hills. Fullarton

identifies Mir Ja’far on the back but not the leading figure, who appears to be his son

Miran (d. 1760).14

The artist Purannath known Hunhar II has signed the painting just

in front of Mir Ja’far’s horse’s foreleg. While the tall figures with their crisp profiles

and long, high-waisted jamas are obviously influenced by the imperial style, the

flattened foreground landscape with parallel steaks of green lines running through it

seems peculiar to Hunhar and is also found in the signed work from his Delhi period

mentioned above. The picture seems cropped at the top and the strange grey lines in

the sky would have been originally underneath a thunderously cloudy and golden

sky.15

Before entering Fullarton’s collection, the painting was in the collection of

Hidayatallah Khan whose seal dated [11]73 (AD 1759) is also on the back.

Presumably Hunhar was in the train of Hidayatallah Khan who accompanied Prince

‘Ali Gauhar, now the Emperor Shah ‘Alam after the murder of his father, on his

eastern expedition in 1759.16

Other Murshidabad versions following the format of

14

Compare a later joint portrait with his father in the Murshidabad durbar (Walsh 1902, pl. opp. p.

150). 15

The grey lines in the sky are also found in his earlier Delhi work, e.g. portraits of two emperors in an

album in the Royal Collection, Windsor Castle (Roy 2012, figs. 2a and 2b) 16

Skelton 1956 pp. 16-17.

8

grand imperial processional paintings are also known.17

In the hands of the

Murshidabad artists, the hilly landscape of the imperial examples was flattened to

resemble that of the landscape of Bengal, with myriads of tiny figures wending their

way through it or engaged on their everyday tasks (fig. 6).18

Fig. 6. A river scene. Murshidabad, c. 1760. Opaque watercolour heightened with gold on paper.

25.4 x 33.3 cm; page 27 x 35 cm. British Library, London, Add.Or.484.

Mir Ja’far not having proved compliant enough for the Company, it deposed him and

put his son-in-law Mir Qasim (r. 1760-63) on the masnad of Bengal in 1760. One

unintended consequence of these political developments was the expansion of the

Murshidabad painting style to Patna. Nawab Mir Qasim moved his capital and his

court including all his treasure and his harem from the indefensible Murshidabad to

Munger in Bihar in 1762 in order to prepare for an inevitable war with the Company

and to effect an alliance with Shah ‘Alam then in Patna and with Nawab Shuja’ al-

Daula of Avadh in order to try recover lost ground in eastern India. The Murshidabad

artist Dip Chand’s signed or securely attributed work is all associated with Patna and

was in the collection of the Company’s surgeon at Patna, William Fullarton, by 1764.

His work there is well known and includes a portrait of a Company man presumed to

be William Fullarton as well as portraits of his Mughal friends and their mistresses.19

Mir Qasim’s revolution was not however to be and in 1764 after the final defeat of the

allied forces at Buxar he fled into exile in Avadh and penury. Mir Ja’far had been

reinstalled by the Company on the masnad in 1763 but died two years later.

17

For example in the Francesca Galloway sale catalogue, The Divine and the Profane, 2012, no. 32. 18

For similar examples see Losty and Roy 2012, fig. 119; Leach 1995, no. 7.103; Sotheby’s London 31

May 2011, lot 109 (S.C. Welch collection). 19

For Dip Chand’s work see Losty 2002, pp. 37-43.

9

Another of Fullarton’s portraits with a date on the reverse of 1764, that of Mir Qasim,

must show the Nawab at the height of his powers (fig. 7).20

It echoes the terrace and

canopy composition of earlier court portraits but shows a new type of landscape

formula. The Nawab is seated on a terrace on the banks of the River Ganga at Patna,

where the immense width of the river is suggested by the tiny trees on the opposite

bank.

Fig. 7. Nawab Mir Qasim with a Hindu or Jain banker. Murshidabad style at Patna, 1763-64, after Dip

Chand. Opaque watercolour heightened with gold on paper. 33.8 x 26.5 cm. Victoria & Albert

Museum, London, D.1178-1903.

Particularly noticeable is the curve of the horizon which appears increasingly in

Murshidabad landscape painting from this time on. Mir Qasim was a handsome man

and his features now supplant those of Siraj al-Daula (see fig. 2) as the hero of

ragamala and similar paintings as well as becoming a generic type of nobleman in

genre scenes.21

In a painting depicting the Holi festival (fig. 8), a Nawab is seated

with an important visitor amidst his womenfolk on a terrace in front of his riverside

garden. This spirited scene, again from Fullarton’s collection in 1764, echoes two

features found in earlier paintings. The Nawab’s features seem modelled on those of

Mir Qasim, although this could also be said of many of the younger men in the

painting. The disjunction of viewpoint between the figures on the terrace and the

20

The Nawab and his two attendants are taken from the portrait of Mir Qasim attributable to Dip

Chand now in the Museum für Islamische Kunst, Berlin (Losty 2002, fig. 7). 21

Losty and Roy 2012, fig. 128.

10

much more steeply observed garden has been seen before in the terrace portrait of

‘Alivardi Khan (fig. 2), while the impressionistic approach to the garden flowers we

have also seen in the garden scene with Mir Ja’far (fig. 4). There is no horizon so we

must assume that the garden is jutting straight out into the River Ganga and again,

given the Fullarton provenance, at Patna. Paintings on such a large scale with a large

number of figures are something of a rarity in Murshidabad painting which normally

keeps its subjects limited to portraits, Ragamala subjects and genre scenes.

Fig. 8. A nobleman and his entourage enjoying the festival of Holi. Murshidabad style at Patna, 1763-

64. Opaque watercolour heightened with gold on paper. 47 x 53.5 cm. Former collection of S.C.

Welch. Art Institute of Chicago, 2011.250.

The naturalistic landscape seen behind ‘Alivardi Khan hunting (fig. 3) is an isolated

phenomenon and contrasts with other types of Murshidabad landscapes depicted in

paintings from this period. These in general keep to traditional landscape formats, as

in sets of Ragamala paintings. Even in such paintings, however, influence from the

picturesque movement can sometimes be found, as in a few of the paintings from the

Ragamala of c.1760 acquired by Sir Elijah Impey, the Chief Justice of Bengal 1774-

1783, and his wife Mary and in other contemporary sets.22

The Gauri Ragini from

the Impey set (fig. 9) shows a solitary pensive maiden, but the dominant foreground

tree, something of a new motif in Indian painting, suggests that the artist had seen

picturesque prints with naturalistic landscapes, where the tall tree at the side serves as

a repoussoir device to distance the main subject of the painting. Here again the

22

Falk and Archer 1981, nos. 368i-viii and 369i-viii; Leach 1995, 6.271-284.

11

viewpoint is the naturalistic, European one, as in fig. 3. The position of the maiden

needs no explanation, as she is clearly seated on a rock level with the viewer’s eyes,

with a lotus-filled lake beyond. The little line of trees along the horizon and

elsewhere is also found in fig. 7. The beautiful golden glow of the sky may be

attributed to the imperial influence from artists such as Hunhar II. The Impey set is

remarkable for its borders which are plain red and blue suggestive of Rajput influence

in Bengal. It was commissioned not by the Impeys themselves but presumably by a

Hindu patron.

Fig. 9. Gauri ragini. From the Impey Ragamala. Murshidabad, c. 1760. Opaque watercolour

heightened with gold on paper. 21.5 x 14 cm; page 35.2 by 24.2 cm. British Library, London,

Add.Or.4.

LATER MURSHIDABAD PICTURES

In contrast, other types of Murshidabad paintings such as the Johnson Ragamala keep

to the traditional landscape and terrace formats with high viewpoints and interlocking

triangles of often almost geometrical severity, or more fantastic shapes to suggest

mountains.23

Here the artists are playing with the naturalistic conventions introduced

in the 1750s, converting them to elements of the formal design with their clashes of

multiple perspective points. In Sri raga from this set (fig. 10), depicted as a

23

Ibid., no. 370i-xxxvi.

12

contemporary prince holding court on a terrace, we note the artist’s playing with the

perspective lines of his pavilion, his great arcs of landscape (compare fig. 7) and the

brilliantly coloured clouds curling and twisting like snakes. It seems unlikely that this

set can be contemporary with the Impey Ragamala as normally thought. In addition

to the artist’s playful use of the naturalistic conventions of the Impey set, his figures

have now reverted to the stunted figures of the 1750s, particularly evident in his

standing figures, with more schematic modelling of their features. The imperial, more

naturalistic influences seen in figs. 4, 5, 7 and 8 have now been abandoned in a

reassertion of more traditional non-Mughal values.24

The Hindi translation of the

relevant verses of Harivallabha’s Sangita-darpana on the reverse of each painting

again suggests a non-Mughal patron for this set.

Fig. 10. Sri Raga. From the Johnson Ragamala. Murshidabad, c. 1770. Opaque watercolour

heightened with gold on paper. 32 x 21.5 cm; page 39.3 x 29 cm. British Library, London, Johnson

Album 36, 12.

Murshidabad painting is fairly limited in subject matter but artists were able to

broaden their scope sometimes to paint various genre scenes and even illustrate

24

The arcs of landscape go back ultimately to the Sultanate tradition of the 16th

century and in

particular to the only Sultanate manuscript known from Bengal, Nusrat Shah’s Sharaf nama of 1531-

32, as do the brilliant twists of multi-coloured clouds (British Library, Or. 13836, see Skelton 1978;

Losty 1982, no. 44).

13

manuscripts. Artists seem to have been equally at home illustrating stories whether

from Hindu or Islamic sources, but whether these were done in studios belonging to

specific noblemen or on an ad hoc basis is not at present known. The familiar theme

of Baz Bahadur and his beloved Rupmati is one such story that is always referenced

by showing the two of them riding together through a moonlight landscape as

inanother painting from the Impey collection, mounted similarly to their Ragamala

(fig. 10) in blue and red frames .25

The iconography of the scene scarcely varies

whatever the school. Scenes such as Madhavanala fainting before Kamakandala

could similarly sum up whole stories and serve as icons for recalling whole swathes of

literature (fig. 11).26

Madhavanala has disguised himself as an ascetic musician and,

on finding the lovely Kamakandala again, he falls before her in a swoon, while

Kamakandala's handmaidens attempt to revive him. Although a Hindu subject, the

story can be read as illustrating the soul’s search for the divine in the mystical Sufi

tradition and so be equally popular in both religious communities.

Fig. 11. Madhavanala fainting before Kamakandala. Murshidabad, c. 1760. Opaque watercolour

heightened with gold on paper. 25.3 x 17 cm; page 31.5 by 23.1 cm. British Library, London,

Add.Or.482.

ILLUSTRATED MANUSCRIPTS

25

British Library, Add.Or.8 (Falk and Archer 1981, no. 372) 26

. Aitken 2010, pp. 279-82, calls such images ‘metanarratives’.

14

Relatively few illustrated manuscripts can be associated with the Murshidabad school.

Heavily illustrated manuscripts require both a studio and an enlightened patron, for

which the conditions do not seem to have existed in Murshidabad any more than they

did in Mughal Delhi in the later eighteenth century. Nonetheless some illustrated

manuscripts were produced, of which the most important are the Dastur-i Himmat in

the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin and the Nal Daman in the Victoria Memorial,

Kolkata.27

The former is almost certainly the product of Nawabi patronage in the

1750s but it is almost unique. As the Company increased its grip on Bengal and the

Nawab’s finances after 1765, traditional court patronage seems to have died out.

Fig. 12. Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and Kunti sit with the rishis in the forest. From the Impey

Razmnama. Murshidabad, c. 1775-80. Opaque watercolour heightened with gold on paper. 25 x 40

cm. British Library, London, Add. MS 5640, f. 384v.

A Razmnama manuscript, the Persian translation of the Mahabharata, is indicative of

a new sort patronage. Copied originally in Moradabad 1761-63. it was acquired at

some point by Sir Elijah Impey, since the three volumes have his seal impression of

1775, and it was doubtless he who added a complete set of illustrations painted on

card and inserted into the three volumes. Although illustrated mostly in an

unimaginative and inexpressive style, it has at the end an important group of paintings

indicative of the changes in the Murshidabad style in the 1770s.28

In a remarkable

scene showing Dhritarashtra, Gandhari and Kunti sitting with the rishis after they

have retired to the forest (fig. 12), the two groups sit facing each other but do not

communicate as they are all wrapped up in their inward-looking reveries. Their

bodies are flat and stylised. The life in the painting is provided by the wonderful

27

For the Dastur-i Himmat, see Leach 1995, pp. 623-54. 28

For other paintings from this manuscript, see Losty 1982, p. 111, and Losty 1986, no. 67.

15

screen of trees, each one individually depicted and remarkably detailed. Earlier

attempts at naturalism have now disappeared and the style has moved closer to Rajput

work.29

Extra fig. 1. Laksmana cuts off the nose of Surpanakha. From the Impey Ramayana. Bengal, c. 1780.

British Library, London, Add.Or.5725 [new acquisition]

A further development in the Murshidabad style is the increasing presence of folk

Bengali art, as can be seen in yet another project associated with Sir Elijah Impey, his

album of Ramayana paintings (extra fig. 1). Conventionally dated c.1770, it is

difficult to reconcile the style of these paintings with anything else going on in

Murshidabad painting at this time and it is preferable to date them a little later around

1780.30

Their dependence on the pata scrolls of Bengal with their conceptual

approach of figures acting in a non-specific environment is obvious. Ragamala and

29

A similar group of paintings of scenes from Hindu mythology also from the Impey collection is in

the Bodleian Library: Ms Douce Or a 3, ff. 29-38. 30

The series is now totally dispersed. For a recent publication, see Bonham’s New York 19 March

2012, lot 1173. Other pages are in the Asiant Art Museum, San Francisco, and LACMA.

16

similar sets become increasingly uninspired in the next few decades and what life

there was in the traditional Murshidabad style was channelled into more obviously

Hindu subjects such as Dasavatara sets and albums of deities. Although similar

sculptured images exist from eastern India, the iconography of this enchanting picture

of Parvati with Ganesh (fig. 13) seems rather based on that of the Christian Virgin and

Child via earlier Mughal sources.

Fig. 13. Parvati nursing her child Ganesh. Murshidabad, c. 1770-80. Opaque watercolour heightened

with gold and silver on paper. 16.9 x 10.4 cm; page 23.8 by 13.6 cm. British Library, London,

Add.Or. 1036.

After the basic style was fixed in the 1750s, Murshidabad artists did not so much

develop the style as decorate it, making fine Murshidabad paintings up to about 1770

such a delight to the eye. Murshidabad artists, however, were still absorbing some

ideas from Europe, and an increasing fondness for the face in three-quarter profile as

in fig. 13 was one which filtered through into popular Bengal painting. After 1765

and the change in the financial arrangements in Bengal, the Nawabs ceased to be

major patrons of traditional paintings as it became too expensive to maintain a studio.

NEW PATRONS

17

By 1780 Murshidabad artists were faced with a stark choice. Many continued with

the traditional style, which became increasingly coarse and desiccated in the period up

to 1800. There is little evidence to suggest that any of these artists were in receipt of

court patronage, which instead seems to have favoured the work of British artists (see

below). This debased court style was continued at the level of various sub-styles,

perhaps in centres outside Murshidabad proper. It seems clear, however, that few if

any good artists were prepared to go on with the traditional court style after 1780.

There had arisen new patrons, in the form of the British who held power in Kolkata

and who were present throughout Bengal. They were particularly prevalent in the

north around Murshidabad where many of the Company’s factories were congregated,

and there is much evidence to suggest that it was they who were principally the

patrons of the new style which we are about to discuss. We must however assume

from the technical competence of work in the new style and the general debasement

of the old that it was the major artists of Murshidabad who changed their style to fit in

with their new patrons. We can observe similar effortless change of style by major

Delhi artists in the early 19th

century.

Extra fig. 2. A Bengal army officer standing pensively by a river. Opaque watercolour and

watercolour on paper. 27.7 x 21.5 cm. Murshidabad, 1770-80. Victoria & Albert Museum, London,

IS 16-1955.

18

European watercolour techniques were introduced into Murshidabad miniatures in the

1770s, as in the Englishman standing pensively by a river (extra fig. 2). While the

Englishman, his servant and his dog and the foliage of the tree are painted in the

traditional opaque pigments, the river, hills and sky are painted in watercolour

washes, whose lightening towards the horizon suggests recession in the European

picturesque tradition as in fig. 3. Again a solitary tree dominates the composition as

in Gauri ragini (fig. 9) and indeed soars outside it, but as with the earlier miniature,

the tree is used as an element in the composition rather than as a repoussoir device to

suggest distance. Note also here the extremely naturalistic handling of the surface of

the tree trunk, a mannerism that becomes particularly prevalent in the next century.

Watercolour is a very rapid medium and it was increasingly used in the various

albums of Mughal emperors and officials and of castes and occupations that British

patrons wanted from Murshidabad artists.31

For such work Murshidabad artists would

have found it far easier and quicker to work in a watercolour and wash medium rather

than their traditional burnished layers of opaque pigments, besides being much

cheaper. The models for such sets of castes and occupations were the books of

costumes of 18th century Europe. Few European patrons had the resources or will to

maintain a studio such as had Col. Polier in Avadh. Those who were interested in

traditional paintings such as Impey, Johnson and Warren Hastings preferred to buy in

the market as old collections were dispersed.

Other influences were now brought into play, resulting in a complete reformulation of

the types of composition of which Murshidabad artists were capable. British artists

had begun to arrive in Bengal, both portrait painters and landscape artists. William

Hodges's Select Views in India, published in London 1785-88, and Thomas Daniell's

twelve views of Kolkata of 1786-88 influenced Indian artists’ representations of

topography, while François Baltazar Solvyns’ 250 Coloured Etchings of the Hindoos

published in Kolkata 1795 and 1798 greatly influenced their handling of the human

figure. Murshidabad artists also imitated the sombreness of colouring chiefly in blues

and browns found in such prints. Clearly Murshidabad artists also had access to

European artists’ drawings, since they frequently base their work on unpublished

drawings by other artists such as A.W. Devis, George Farington, Robert Home and

George Chinnery, who all worked in Bengal in the late eighteenth and early

nineteenth centuries. Thomas Daniell’s correspondence reveals his dependence on

Bengali artists in Kolkata to complete his twelve aquatint views in 1786-88. Solvyns’

250 Etchings of the Hindoos obviously made use of Bengali artists to do the

colouring. Sita Ram’s work in the 1810s would be inconceivable unless he had been

directly influenced by George Chinnery.

31

Such as the John White and Robert Brouncker albums of 1780-90 now in the British Library (Archer

1972, pp. 62-70, pls. 18-19.

19

Extra fig. 3. The Nawab Mubarak al-Daula in durbar with the Resident, Sir John Hadley D’Oyly.

Watercolour and bodycolour on paper. 41.3 x 56.5 cm. Murshidabad, c. 1790. Victoria & Albert

Museum, London, IS 11-3 1887.

A new type of Murshidabad durbar scene of about 1790 shows the Nawab of Bengal

Mubarak al-Daula (r. 1770-93) receiving Sir John Hadley D'Oyly, the British

Resident in Murshidabad from 1780-84 (extra fig. 3). Terrace, canopy, carpet and

attendants strike familiar notes when compared with figs. 1-2, but they are portrayed

in a radically different way. Nawab and Resident are seated in the centre, while

behind are courtiers and attendants with parasols. Other courtiers stand on each side

and also nearer to us on a terrace than the central figures. The scene is set in a durbar

hall with pillars and arcades, although the function of the pillars and the architectural

order of their capitals are far from clear in the disappearance of the old palace. The

Nawab, although far from the largest of the figures, forms the focus of the

dramatically receding perspective. He occupies the centre of attention through his

being level with the sightline of the artist and hence the viewer; the whole scene is

now viewed from this same viewpoint, that is from the naturalistic western one.

Other differences from earlier durbar scenes include the far less formal stances of the

figures and their groupings, while the immense elongation of the foreground figures is

no doubt caused by an Indian artist's difficulties with perspective in this naturalistic,

European viewpoint. The technique used in this painting is now principally washes of

watercolour, which has in places been thickened with a white filler to add body. In

adopting this gouache or bodycolour technique, Bengal artists may have been

attempting to imitate the impasto finish of an oil painting.

Mildred Archer has suggested that this and other Murshidabad festival and court

20

scenes are based on lost paintings by the minor historical painter George Farington,

who is known to have been in Murshidabad from 1785-88, where he died.32

Sir John

Hadley D'Oyly on retiring from his lucrative post in 1784 commissioned an oil

painting from Farington of a durbar scene at Murshidabad and this hung in the

Murshidabad palace for some while before it was sent after Farington’s death to

England. Another version was also painted for D’Oyly’s successor Robert Pott.

Neither of these paintings, nor any of Farington’s work, has survived. Farington in

the three years he was at Murshidabad could not possibly have painted full scale

versions of all the grand ceremonial scenes and festivals which form the core of

Murshidabad painting in this new style, although we know he was busy producing

preliminary drawings of them. This durbar scene with D’Oyly is painted more or less

fully from the naturalistic viewpoint and is perhaps a direct copy of Farington’s

original.

Murshidabad artists in this school divided their work into three principal categories:

festivities, topography and gentlemen’s houses. Their work has survived principally

in large albums or portfolios of drawings collected by British patrons such as the

Marquess Wellesley and Col. James Chicheley Hyde.33

Their festivity scenes

encompassed Hindu and Muslim festivals equally.34

Fig, 14. The climax of the Muharram festival by night. Murshidabad, c. 1790-1800. Watercolour and

bodycolour on paper. 41.6 x70.3 cm; page 45.5 x 74.2 cm. British Library, London, Add.Or.3231.

32

Archer 1979, pp. 122-29. 33

For the Wellesley collection in the British Library, see Archer 1972, nos. 44-46; the Hyde Collection

of Murshidabad drawings Add.Or.3188-3226 and NHD50/1 and 50/2 is largely unpublished (but see

figs. 19-22, and 27). An intact album of unknown patronage comparable to the Hyde collection is

described in Losty 2011. Another collection mostly of festivities is in the V & A, see Archer 1992,

nos. 40-47. 34

For other drawings of festivals, see Archer 1972, pls. 21-22; Archer 1979, figs. 78-82; and Archer

1992, nos. 42(2-4)/

21

An exceptionally ambitious painting (fig. 14) represents the climax of the Muharram

festival by night in the old wooden Imambara at Murshidabad and includes the central

mosque or Madina, the only part of the structure to survive a disastrous fire in 1846.

The taziyas have been deposited in the central Madina and the standards in the

surrounding arcades, after they had been taken in procession through the streets. The

artist has successfully pictured the brilliant illuminations with light from the

candelabra, lamps and girandoles reflected in mirrors and the pieces of glass sewn

into the black hangings. Like the durbar scene it is depicted from the artist’s

viewpoint on the ground but without the excessive elongation of the figures. It

perhaps also is based on a Farington original.

Many other of these large landscape format Murshidabad paintings would seem to

have been worked up from Farington’s and other artists’ drawings. They revert to a

more traditional elevated viewpoint than the D’Oyly durbar scene (extra fig. 3) and

the Muhurram scene (fig. 14). This new viewpoint allowed Murshidabad artists to

create both an interesting foreground of Indians going about their business and also a

meaningful architectural or landscape background, as in a fireworks scene at night

opposite the old palace at Murshidabad, presumably during Diwali (fig. 15).

Fig. 15. Diwali festivities with fireworks by night opposite the old palace. Murshidabad, 1790-1800.

Watercolour and bodycolour on paper. 41.2 c 71.9 cm (page 45.3 x 76.2 cm). British Library, London,

Add.Or.3234.

Across the River Bhagirathi we can see the durbar hall of the palace and beyond it a

European style two-storeyed building, part of the Nawab’s private quarters no doubt,

as well as the twin minarets and five domes of Mani Begum’s or the Chowkh Masjid

and the side view of the Tripoliya gateway leading into the palace. To the right is the

22

southernmost of the two riverside mosques that marked the extent of the palace

grounds.

Apart from the buildings of Murshidabad such as the Palace, the Chowkh Masjid and

Motijhil, other drawings in this style showcase buildings elsewhere in India including

Lucknow, Agra, Varanasi and even Seringapatam.35

Mildred Archer first showed that

a few of these drawings are after the prints of William Hodges published 1786-88.36

For many of them, however, there was no published source and Murshidabad artists

must have relied on copies of European artists’ drawings which seem to have been

freely circulating in India. Many of these are of the famous monuments of Upper

India, but also included in these sets are sometimes minor monuments including the

tomb of Shaikh Ibrahim Chishti at the Nadan Mahal in Lucknow (fig. 16). This is a

careful version of a picturesque type of drawing by one of the many British artists

who had visited Lucknow. The Murshidabad artist has been careful to include details

of the somewhat dilapidated condition of these buildings with their peeling stucco and

exposed brickwork.

Fig. 16. Tomb of Shaikh Ibrahim Chishti at the Nadan Mahal, Lucknow. Murshidabad, 1790-1800.

Watercolour on paper. 32.8 x 44.2 cm; page 39.3 x 50.6 cm. British Library, London, Add.Or.3216.

Another favourite topic for British patrons based around Murshidabad in the

Company’s factories and cantonments was paintings of their grand colonial style

houses. Many of these drawings have inscriptions naming the occupants of the house,

35

For the Darya Daulat palace at Seringapatam by a Murshidabad artist, see Archer 1992, no. 41. 36

Archer 1972, pp. 78-79, and pl. 23.

23

and sometimes the same house appears in different sets under the name of different

owners. The idea behind their production is obviously derived from picture books of

views of gentlemen’s seats in Britain. Thomas Pattle’s two-storeyed Palladian

mansion at Champapoka outside Murshidabad was very grand indeed and the

viewpoint of the artist has made it even more imposing (extra fig. 4). Most of these

houses were depicted at an angle to show off their artists’ grasp of European

perspective, but here we are given the full frontal treatment that includes the semi

circular drive leading up to the arcaded portico, the colonnaded loggia above, and

pavilions and outhouses on either side.

Extra fig. 4. South Front of Mr. Pattle’s House, Champapoka. Murshidabad, 1790-1800. Watercolour

on paper. 37.4 x 51.5. British Library, London, Add.Or.3197.

Thomas Pattle was a very senior man in the East India Company’s Bengal hierarchy,

having arrived in Bengal in 1766. In 1799 he became the Senior Judge of the Court of

Appeal at Murshidabad and was in charge of Nizamut affairs at the Murshidabad

court for the next ten years.

Thomas Pattle’s son Richard William Pattle was also in the Company’s service in

Bengal from 1790. Two fine drawings inscribed on the reverse as belonging to his

wife Mrs R.W. Pattle are in the British Museum, where their superior

draughtsmanship led to their being attributed to Mrs Pattle as the artist and placed

with the European drawings rather than the Indian ones (fig. 17).37

37

The other is British Museum 1957.1118.9, a nobleman watching a boy dancer and musicians.

24

Fig. 17. The Nawwabbi Palace & Pleasure Boats at Morshidabad. Murshidabad, 1790-1800.

Inscribed on verso as title and: Mrs R.W. Pattle No – 11. Brush drawing with wash and colour on

paper. 35.8 x 65.8 mm. British Museum, London, Prints and Drawings 1958.11-18.8.

This is the same view as in the earlier one just discussed across the river of the old

palace at Murshidabad but here in a style more akin to an English watercolour. It is

also a more accurate view of the durbar hall of the old palace showing it to consist of

a double-storyed central hall with a an arcaded verandah all around and an attached

octagonal tower or Musamman Burj facing the river. This beautiful drawing shows

also some of the Nawab’s pleasure boats on the river, while a pinnace budgerow sails

in the opposite direction. Only a few awkward passages in the perspective reveal the

hand of an Indian artist. The artist’s viewpoint is meant to be on the extreme right of

the painting, given that we can see the back of the pavilion on the filchari boat, yet

this same angle is used for almost all the south sides of the further buildings instead of

making them progressively more parallel to the picture plane as they would appear in

reality. Yet the buildings themselves are obviously drawn by an artist who had been

trained in an English draughtsman’s techniques. Their individual perspective is

generally good and light and shade are used perceptively to ensure that the buildings

appear to be solid masses and not empty screens. Such achievements cannot be the

result of simply copying other people’s drawings, but instead show a perceptive

artistic intelligence at work. New here is a different sort of repoussoir, a severely

limited foreground, just an intimation of the shore of the near side of the river, with a

few figures standing on it. This kind of device was used to great effect by Sita Ram,

the only one of these later Murshidabad artists about whom anything is known. It is

very possible that this is an early work by this remarkable artist.

25

SITA RAM AND THE END OF THE TRADITION

So far ‘Murshidabad’ has been discussed as a stylistic criterion, rather than as an

actual place of production of these paintings. The large paintings linked with the

buildings and personalities of the city of Murshidabad were presumably actually

painted in that city, but it is also clear that other artists had moved downriver to

Kolkata and worked there in the same sort of style. By about 1810, there must have

been few artists left in Murshidabad proper and many more in Kolkata itself. It is in

that city that we find the greatest artist of the later school of Murshidabad, Sita Ram,

the artist in residence for Lord and Lady Moira (afterwards Hastings, as he will be

referred to here) from 1814 to the early 1820s. Lord Hastings was the Governor-

General of Bengal, and he and his wife employed Sita Ram to record views of places

which they saw on their journeys, and also to record the flora and fauna of India. Sita

Ram is referred to occasionally in Lord Hastings’ journal as a Bengal draftsman, one

of those many artists who worked in the official establishments in and around

Kolkata. At some stage unknown he was picked out for the superiority of his work

and was given training in pure watercolour technique that suggests access to the work

of George Chinnery and his pupil Charles D’Oyly. His principal work survives in ten

volumes of drawings recording Hastings’ journey from Kolkata to Lucknow,

Haryana, Agra and back in 1814-15.38

We can close this survey of Murshidabad painting with two of Sita Ram’s finest

works. Sita Ram normally drew what he saw, although clothing it in picturesque

garb, but for one painting from the first of his ten volumes of views, he created a

fantasy. Lord Hastings had been struck by the Nawab’s newly built morpankhi when

visiting Murshidabad, as much by its inconvenience as by its magnificence.39

Sita

Ram has created a fantasy, showing not just this boat but other similar state boats as

well and placed them, not on the relatively safe Bhagirathi at Murshidabad, but

instead 150 km upstream on the Ganga itself below the Moti Jharna, the famous

waterfall in the Rajmahal Hills (fig. 18), and this in July with the river in full flood.40

Being a typically Indian artist as well as a picturesque one, to create this fantasy he

has made use of earlier Murshidabad studies of pleasure and state boats such as those

in the drawing owned by Mrs Pattle (fig. 17) and placed them in the same positions as

in that painting. Note also the small promontory with figures on it in the foreground,

another earlier device that he borrows here for good use as a distancing effect.

38

Eight volumes are in the British Library (Add.Or. 4698-4880), two were dispersed at auction in

1974. 39

Hastings 1858, vol. I, pp. 80-81. 40

Hastings notes the loss of a considerable number of his boats once on the main river (Ibid., pp. 88-

92).

26

Fig. 18. The state boats of the Nawab of Murshidabad passing the Moti Jharna waterfall. By Sita Ram,

1814. Watercolour on paper. 45.5 cm x 64 cm. San Diego Museum of Art, Edwin Binney 3rd

Collection, 1990.1376.

In addition to the ten volumes of views on the 1814-15 journey of Lord Hastings, Sita

Ram produced two volumes of views of upper Bengal and adjacent parts of Bihar to

accompany Lord Hastings’ expeditions in 1817.41

An individual painting of a scene

at Murshidabad that does not come from any of the known albums shows the gateway

leading to the lakeside palace at Moti Jhil, the horse-shoe shaped lake south-east of

the city (fig. 19).42

Sita Ram shows us the view looking north-west. The gateway

leads to the pleasure-park and to the Sang-i Dalan palace behind the artist and hence

unseen, while the Kala Masjid is situated between the gateway and the River

Bhagirathi beyond that. Oddly he shows us the back of the mosque, which then

makes it orientated in the wrong direction. This view has until recently been

unidentified, but an earlier view from a Murshidabad artist can be used to place it. At

the inner bend of the horse-shoe this earlier artist shows the Sang-i Dalan pleasure

palace, taken over after 1757 by the Company’s Residents at the court including

Warren Hastings (fig. 20).

41

Losty 1996. 42

The Sita Ram view surfaced in a UK provincial auction before being acquired by Dr William K

Ehrenfeld (Bautze 1998, no. 82) and subsequently by the Metropolitan Museum.

27

Fig, 19. Gateway and mosque at the Moti Jhil, Murshidabad. Attributed to Sita Ram, c. 1817.

Watercolour on paper. 33 x 48.9 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2002-461. Cynthia

Hazen Polsky and Leon B. Polsky Fund.

.

Fig. 20. The Moti Jhil and Sang-i Dalan. Murshidabad, c. 1800. Watercolour and bodycolour on

paper. 38 x 50.7 cm; page 43 x 55.4 cm. British Library, London, Add.Or. 3209.

The gateway stands opposite the two curved arms of the lake and the mosque is

beyond, here shown facing the right direction. The palace itself is not shown in Sita

Ram’s paintings, but he does include the Kala Masjid which was built opposite the

two ends of the lake. Only the mosque and lake remain today. The striking

differences between the two views illustrate how far Sita Ram had travelled from his

28

earlier roots. The earlier painting from about 1800 employs a naive overhead view of

the site with its buildings clinging awkwardly to an apparently sloping surface.

Scarcely a dozen years later Sita Ram’s sophisticated approach to the rendition of

landscape places the buildings not only in their physical context but manages to

convey as well the life of the Bengal countryside that was going on around them.

Sita Ram disappears from view along with his patrons in 1822. Only one other artist

trained in the Murshidabad style can in any way compare with him, an anonymous

artist who worked for Walter Raleigh Gilbert in Orissa and Bihar.43

British patrons in

Kolkata thenceforth seem to have preferred the harder style associated with Shaikh

Muhammad Amir of Karaya to record their houses, dogs and servants, and to

disengage themselves aesthetically from the real India all around them, as indeed did

the Nawabs with their patronage of a purely European type of art.

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