What are Mughal Albums?

Rice writes how Mughal albums “are in essence collections of disparate drawings, paintings of South Asian and Persian origins, specimens of Persian calligraphy and European engravings” – basically a book like display of select art pieces from various sources.

To me this seems pretty interesting and unusual – the curation of works indicated the Mughal court/king’s openness towards the influx of foreign cultures and practices, and the lack of a unifying narrative in the album seemed really distinct in a region that produces art heavily focused on visual narrative.

How can we understand painting in the Mughal context?

Personally, I feel that the painting in the Mughal context (within royal Mughal albums) can be understood in two ways – chronologically, and visually/ aesthetically.

Chronologically, a change in the Islamic attitude towards paintings as an art form can be seen – historically, paintings were looked upon with scorn due to their very literal figurative depiction, which was seen as a direct challenge to the creative authority of God. In comparison, calligraphy with its abstract brush strokes were often hailed as superior. However, this attitude can be seen to have changed upon examination of the royal Jahangir albums. In  these albums, paintings were collected and displayed alongside specimens of calligraphy, with attempts made to unify the two within the composition of the verso/ recto of the folios. The attention given to these paintings shown that painting was accorded a significant amount recognition as an art form, possibly even to be on par with the status of calligraphy. Hence it can be said that painting was viewed to be a prized form of art in the royal Mughal court, despite the contrary Islamic tradition.

Visually, the paintings can be compared to its counterparts (engravings and calligraphy) found alongside it in the royal Mughal albums. As Rice noted in her text, “Attempts to historicise the illuminator’s art closely echo…earlier discourse on the six styles of calligraphy.” Thus, it can be seen that visually, heavy emphasis was placed on the brushstrokes of the paintings, much like the tradition of calligraphy, and attempts have been made to base the illuminator’s craft on that of the calligrapher’s.

The paintings also bear a strong resemblance to engravings, with both sharing the trait of depicting figural images. In addition, the albums seem to have been carefully curated by grouping similar compositions together in engravings and painting, despite their apparent differences in sources and depicted narrative. This focus on aesthetic similarities suggests that the curation of royal Mughal albums (and thus paintings) were based primarily on visual bases rather than content.

How does the author conclude?

Rice concludes by reiterating the main arguments she proposed in her article – firstly, that European engravings were easily  assimilated into the Mughal albums due to Mughal focus on aesthetic quality over content; secondly, that the Mughal albums themselves present compelling evidence on the way royal Mughal art was created and curated, with the inclusion of European engravings revealing the fluidity of categorization between the different art forms.