18th Century Persianate Albums made in India

Yuthika Sharma (Invited speaker)

Edinburgh College of Art

Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in conference

Description

Topography as Mughal Utopia? Polier’s ‘Garden Series’ and Artistic Exchange in 18th-Century Periphery-Centre Imagination

Period	2021
Event type	Conference
Location	Berlin, GermanyShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International

Keywords

Album, India, Mughal, Provincial

Documents & Links

This workshop will address the role of Indo-Persianate albums (muraqqaʿs) that were assembled for or collected by the Mughal governors of Awadh (Uttar Pradesh): Shujaʿ al-Daula (r. 1754–75) and his successor Asaf al-Daula (r. 1775–97), as well as other local elites in Bengal and Bihar. Europeans also participated in the creation and consumption of albums, as patrons and collectors. In 1882, the Prussian State acquired a group of twenty albums from the twelfth Duke of Hamilton. So far, these artworks have received little study. Eight of them belonged to the Scottish surgeon and interpreter Archibald Swinton (1731–1804) and ten to the Franco-Swiss engineer-architect Antoine Louis Henri Polier (1741–1795)—both were Company officers deeply acquainted with Indo-Persian aristocratic culture. Many more albums are linked to well-known European figures, such as the Governor-General of Bengal Warren Hastings (1732–1818) and the French Company officer (and special agent to Shujaʿ al-Daula in Faizabad) Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gentil (1726–1799). Numerous interrelated questions arise from the study of this material, concerning audiences, artists, patrons, collectors, and their wish to produce and preserve knowledge.