Indian Paintings: from Oxford Collections

Thanks to its past benefactors, the University of Oxford's collections in the Bodleian Library and Ashmolean Museum are very rich in Indian paintings, especially of the Mughal period (c.1550-1850), in which court painting was raised to new levels of naturalistic refinement. The Bodleian has the older and larger collection, dating from Archbishop Laud's donation of an album of Mughal paintings in 1640. As well as some outstanding Mughal and Deccani masterpieces of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Bodleian has extensive holdings of the later provincial schools of the eighteenth century. The Ashmolean collection, formed since the 1950s, complements the Bodleian's in its representation of the Rajput schools of Rajasthan and the Punjab Hills. This book presents thirty-eight paintings of the Mughal, Deccani and Rajput schools, from the period c.1560-1800. They include portraits of rulers and nobles, scenes of life at court, illustrations to romances and examples of the popular genre of ragamala', the illustration of musical modes.