India portrayed

There’s a fascinating exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery at the moment. It focuses on Indian portraits from 1560 – the heyday of the Mughal courts – to 1860 under the British Raj.

A more modern style of Indian portrait - the Bollywood icon

For me, one of the interesting things about these paintings is the way western influence gradually creeps in – the Mughal emperors certainly knew a number of western sources, as there’s even a copy of a Cranach engraving. But it wasn’t a one-way street; westerners also ‘went native’, being portrayed in Indian costume and with their Indian households. For some of them it was just a bit of fancy dress on holiday – for others, who had adopted a completely subcontinental way of life, a good deal more.

Most Indian art, up till the 1560s, was concerned with representing the divinities and their doings, or showing the heroes of literary romance or epic. There wasn’t really much in the way of portraits. Then things changed – and it’s interesting that despite the Islamic prohibition on images of living things, it was at a Muslim court that portraiture first emerged.

The Indian portrait got started in the Mughal courts, when emperor Akbar decided the traditional iconic images of his ancestors weren’t enough – he wanted realistic portraits to pass on to his successors. So the portrait becomes a propaganda piece – as it is, to some extent, in the portraits of Gainsborough, which show the landed gentry in front of their fertile fields and pheant-inhabited copses. Mounted on elephants or receiving ambassadors, the emperors are shown at the height of their glory.

These are splendid portraits in a refined style. But the artists of the Mughal court got fascinated with portraiture, and didn’t stop at representing the emperor and his chief courtiers; they painted the scribes, the holy men, the mahouts and musicians. Some of these portraits are simply stunning – freed from the restraints of imperial patronage, they really come alive. You get a rich sense of the life of the court – from the emperor down to the street sweeper, or pretty nearly.

The Rajput courts took the idea of portraiture from the Mughals, but it’s a more schematised, heavier style – you can see the portrait becoming more conventional. But when the British hit India, they brought a whole mix of influences and styles with them, and the resulting ferment threw up some quite idiosyncratic works. I particularly like the painting of Sahib Jan Banda, which dates from 1809 – it has the pose, the landscape setting, and even a little bit of the Mona Lisa’s smile, but the spiralling blue-white clouds come straight out of a Tibetan thangka, and the huge ornamented earring and transparent veil are completely Indian. An odd and beguiling mixture – like the exhibition itself.

Where: National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Lane [map]

When: till 20 June 2010: 1000-1800 daily (till 2100 on Thursdays and Fridays)

How much: free

Photo by on flickr