| [Contd from Part 2] |
| Similarly, in a folio from the Badshahnama, depicting Jahangir receiving Khurram after Mewar campaign of 1615, the artist Balchand includes himself. He appears in the left foreground corner, holding what looks like a portfolio in his hand. |
| And very occasionally one sees an artist portraying himself at work. Here the artist Daulat sits, surrounded by the weapons of his trade, and it is significant that he should be in the company of a scribe/calligraphist, for the two trades were in fact complementary. The calligraphist was responsible for mounting a painting and could therefore, like a framer nowadays, make or mar a picture. |
| The true position of an artist at any court, whether Mughal, provincial Mughal, Rajasthani or Pahari, was essentially one of an employee. His talent determined his remuneration. At best he might achieve momentary recognition. At worst, he would be what Adolf Hitler was before he became the Reichsfuhrer – a house painter. |
| He would be called upon to produce works of art which appealed to the taste of his patron. If found acceptable, his products would then be shared with a larger audience, as in this scene of the court of the young Raja Sansar Chand of Kangra (shown here in red). Sansar Chand despite his youth became one of the great patrons of Pahari painting, commissioning the finest series of Kangra paintings. |
| If naturalism was the hallmark of painting under Jahangir, it became the benchmark of Pahari painting. Under its various patrons, Pahari painting was imbued with an intimacy which took the viewer behind the scenes of courtly life. One saw rulers relaxing with their children (you can see Raja Goverdhan Chand of Guler with his young daughter)… |
| … or Raja Balwant Singh of Jammu with his playful child. |
| One catches a furtive view of a raja cavorting with his mistress beneath the cover of an ample shawl… |
| And of a rare occasion, when she might be treated like a queen in her own right… |
| And then, after the old roue had tired of her or perhaps fired the cook, he might banish her to the kitchen. |
| Like mistresses, artists, being at the receiving end of patronage, could never hope to be their own masters. They had to become adept at the art of pleasing their patrons, even at the expense of historical accuracy. Take this pair of portraits of Raja Sansar Chand of Kangra and Raja Prakash Chand of Guler. We have no evidence that they actually met, except on paper. |
| This miniature purports to record a meeting which never took place, rather like the fanciful painting of Jahangir and Shah Abbas which I had shown you earlier. |
| Perhaps if you were an artist and you did tell the truth, you were not likely to remain in the job for long. The Raja of Mandi looks more forgiving than most, but then he had the sort of face that invites forgiveness. |
| Sometimes an artist would go too far and cross into the muddier field of caricaturing fellow members of the court. But you will notice that he makes fun of musicians, targets that are at his own social level, not above. |
| When in doubt, it is always safer to turn to religion. For an artist, the safest ground of all was mythology. No one could contest whether the Devi actually looked like that. What mattered was whether the image conformed to the scriptures. |
| Similarly, the naughty playfulness of Krshna – the eighth avatar of Vishnu and the darling of the gopis - remained an unfailing source of inspiration. If deftly handled, such representations of Krishna would ensure a ready audience and a steady source of income to any artist. |
| The numerous legends associated with the life and loves of Krishna are spread over a number of poems and Puranas. The most lyrical of them though is the Gita Govinda, composed by Jayadeva whom we see here worshipping Radha and Krishna. It is significant that the poet is depicted in this picture, not the artist. In a sense I wish it had been the artist, for it would saved art-historians volumes of debate. |
| On the final folio of this Gita Govinda series, painted in Basohli, we have an inscription which tells us that it was painted in 1787 VS (1730 AD) by a painter named Manaku. So far, so good. |
| Unfortunately an identical inscription appears on another series of illustrations, again of the Gita Govinda, but done in a recognisiably different style, closer to the Kangra style of the 1780s. How did this happen? Why should the same inscription have reappeared after a gap of fifty years or so? |
| It was during the investigation of this mystery by art-historians that the impact of patronage became more clearly understood, of how families of artists would migrate from patron to patron, and copy earlier works, even repeating an earlier dated inscription. I can think of no better example to illustrate this traffic than the relationship between a very unusual, one might say, odd couple – Raja Balwant Singh of Jammu and his faithful artist Nainsukh, seen here standing deferentially behind the raja’s throne. |
| We know Raja Balwant Singh’s dates from the inscriptions appearing on portraits of him from the age of 18 onwards. This picture contains an inscription that describes him as being eighteen years old when this portrait was done in 1742. He was born therefore in 1724. |
| Another painting shows him listening to his favourite singer Ladvai, and is dated 1748, the year Mir Mannu was defeated in the Punjab plains. The inscription identifies Nainsukh as the painter and contains some lines from a song popular at the time, sung by Ladvai perhaps. |
| Nainsukh’s genius lay, in Mao Zedong’s words, in his ability to seize the hour, to seize the action of a moment. Not only was he perceptive in his portraiture, he was a master in composition. Look at the economical way he has drawn Balwant Singh, using the camouflage of a buffalo, to approach a single sitting duck. It is a remarkable drawing by any standards, and all the more so for coming from the pen of one who was largely self-taught. |
| Obviously, Nainsukh enjoyed a level of access within his patron’s modest court that allowed him to portray the unimportant raja (Balwant Singh was the fourth son of the raja of Jammu) in a variety of moods and on different occasions. If it was winter, Nainsukh had Balwant Singh huddled against the cold in a protective cotton quilt. |
| If it was summer, Nainsukh had Balwant Singh half-dressed and well ventilated. Only Nainsukh though would have noticed and recorded that the young attendant with the chauri deputed to fan the raja was prone to falling asleep on duty. |
| And when Balwant Singh was having his beard trimmed, Nainsukh was there to catch the moment. Only a genius could dignify something so mundane into high art. |
| Nainsukh, now the family photographer, portrays the young sons of Balwant Singh as they sit at the edge of their father’s darbar… |
| And as the elder boy reaches maturity, Nainsukh is on hand to record tactfully his first romance, and who knows – the first tiff between the lovers? |
| The last service Nainsukh performed for his patron was to accompany Balwant Singh’s ashes to Hardwar in 1763. This painting shows two attendants of Balwant Singh guarding his ashes. Neither the patron nor the artist are present, yet one senses acutely the spirit of both. |
| What happened to Nainsukh after the death of Balwant Singh, you may ask? Did he find himself out of a job? In a sense, yes. Deprived of patronage at the court of Jammu, Nainsukh and his family of artists migrated to Basohli, just as Nainsukh’s father Pandit Seu, alongwith Nainsukh and his brother Manak, had shifted from Guler a generation earlier after working for the ruler there. |
