Not Sweating the Small Stuff

Things NOT On The Regret List - Mogul Miniature Paintings

You know sometimes when you travel and see something and you decide not to buy for any number of sensible reasons: 'I'll see better ones later', 'It'd be such a hassle to have to carry it round for the rest of the trip', 'It's too expensive'. Does any of this ring a bell?

So with this in the back of my mind, we bought a number of Mughal paintings in Pushkar in Rajasthan at the beginning of a long-ish trip ... through India, Nepal and Thailand.

Pushkar is one of the five sacred dhams or pilgrimages for Hindus and, like Udaipur, is situated beside a lake fringed with ghats where bodies are cremated on funeral pyres at the water's edge.



Though the fame of the town for tourists is as much for it's annual Mela or Camel Fair.

Pushkar Annual Camel Fair or Mela 2006 (Not my photo)

Mughal painting developed in the C16 in India, in part from Persian miniatures - with its subjects usually being scenes of court and domestic life ...



... journeys ...


... royal processions ...


... battle or hunting scenes ...


... and portraits of courtiers ...


... where the detail can be so neurotic that it hardly seems to diminish with closer ...


... and closer inspection ...


Doing a hair count on the beard is possible - but of course would probably get you committed!

Clicking on the two paintings of the two courtier images enlarges them to a degree that you can really admire the extraordinary detail and refinement I've been talking about.

Sadly, there's not enough space to display all the works we bought - so I do a rotation thing - but curiously there's a lot of favoritism for the courtiers!