Prince Aurangzeb

Prince Aurangzeb

Prince Aurangzeb (later Emperor 'Alamgir, reigned 1658–1707), third son of the Mughal Emperor, Shah Jahan (reigned 1628–58), was the most hardheaded and savvy of the emperor's four son. He detested his elder brother and Shah Jahan's favorite, Prince Dara Shikoh (1615–1659), whom everyone assumed would inherit the Mughal trone. Aurangzeb, who was twice appointed viceroy of the Mughal Deccan, in defiance of his brother, established an alternate power base at Aurangabad, living in the palace he built for himself—the 'Alamgiri Mahal—with his own officers and nobles housed on allotted lands nearby. He held court at his palace. Indeed, it can be asserted that to buttress his claim to the Mughal throne, this "art-hating" prince quite unexpectly became a grand patron, establishing a painting atelier in his palace at Aurangabad and creating departments for musicians, singers, and dancers, in the fashion of any self-respecting prince of the royal house who wanted to be emperor.

Likely painted during Aurangzeb's second term as viceroy (1653–58), this glorious portrait can be assigned to the same patron and workshop as a tiny portrait of the prince and a copy of the Khamsa (Quintet) of Nizami, illustrated with four miniatures in which Aurangzeb himself appears, both in the Khalili Collections.[1] These works would have been made in the Aurangzeb palace workshop, an institution probably composed of refugee artists from Ahmadnagar; enterprising artists from Bijapur, Golconda, and other places in the Deccan; and senior artists from Delhi and other areas in the Mughal Empire.[2] Aurangzeb would likely have maintained this workshop until about 1657 or 1658, when he moved north to defeat his royal brothers in the bloody civil wars of those years.

In this extremely fine head-and-shoulder portrait, Aurangzeb, who appears to be about age thirty-five, is depicted in profile, wearing full court dress, heavy jewelry, and a lavish turban surmounted by an aigrette, with a draped balcony before him and a plain green background behind.[3] This rich yet restrained format is a common arrangement for depicting the imperial family. The prince appears in his jharoka window (a perch for the ruler), dispensing judgment, alive and well as the world can see. This otherwise convential Mughal-style painting has a number of unusual features: its cloth support, florid treatment of woven flowers and arabesque, and sumptuous yet astringent color combinations, all of which suggest the artist was a native of the Deccan. This artist adapted Mughal conventions but could not altogether mimic the style of his classicizing, northern cousins.

The use of cloth is a very common Deccani feature. A cotton support was also used in the large scroll depicting the Procession of Sultan 'Abdullah Quth Shah (fig. 90 in this volume), now in the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai, and the large painting of Prince Azam Shah(1653–1707), son of Aurangzeb, and his retinue formerly in the collection of Sir Akbar Hydari, among other examples.[4] At one time, this painting had a narrow red and yellow border, typical of paintings once owned by the royal house of Bikaner in Rajasthan. Indeed, it might have been Aurangzeb's gift to Karan Singh, the Bikaner maharaja who had served with him in the Deccan.

Terence McInerney in [Haidar and Sardar 2015]

Footnotes:

1. Leach, Linda York. Paintings from India. The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art 8. London: Nour Foundation, in association with Azimuth Editions and Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 96–109, no. 30, p. 220, no. 64.

2. Artists from other places in the Deccan include the Bijapur-trained 'Ali Riza (ibid,. p. 220, no. 64). 'Ali Riza, an artist with a very common name who was active from about 1625 to 1695, and the anonymous master called the Bodleian Painter, an early seventeenth-century Bijapuri artist, were not in this author's opinion one and the same man, despite Keelan Overton's suggestion to the contrary. (See Keelan Overton. "'Ali Riza (The Bodleian Painter)." In Masters of Indian Painting, edited by Milo Cleveland Beach, Eberhard Fisher, and B. N. Goswamy, vol. 1, 1100–1650, pp. 375–90. Artibus Asiae, Supplementum 48. Zurich: Artibus Asiae Publishers.

3. Probably more paintings from Aurangzeb's Aurangabad palace workshop have survived, yet without a datable portrayal of the prince, it is very difficult to identify them.

4. For the procession scene, see Kalpana Desai. Jewels on the Crescent: Masterpieces of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Formerly Prince of Wales Museum of Western India. [Bombay]: Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, in association with Mapin Publishing, Ahmedabad, 2002, pp. 162–63, no. 156. For the painting of Azam Shah, see Stella Kramrisch. A Survey of Painting in the Deccan. London: India Society, with the Department of Archaeology, Hyderabad, 1937, pp. 176–80, pls. XXII, XXIII; K. Desai 2002, ibid., pp. 164, 165, no. 157.

Inscription: Hindi inscription on reverse identifying subject

[ Terence McInerney Fine Arts Ltd., New York; until 2001; sold to Hodgkin]; Howard Hodgkin, London (2001–d. 2017); Howard Hodgkin Indian Collection Trust, London (2017–2022; sold to MMA)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Sultans of Deccan India, 1500–1700: Opulence and Fantasy," April 20–July 26, 2015.

Topsfield, Andrew. "The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, February 2-–April 22, 2012." In Visions of Mughal India: The Collection of Howard Hodgkin. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2012. no. 17, pp. 56–57, ill.

Guy, John, and Navina Haidar. Indian Skies : The Howard Hodgkin Collection of Indian Court Painting (Winter 2024). pp. 13, 15, ill. fig. 14.

Haidar, Navina, and Marika Sardar. "Opulence and Fantasy." In Sultans of Deccan India 1500–1700. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015. no. 166, pp. 288–89, ill.