The Imperial Image: Paintings for the Mughal Court

For centuries in the Islamic world, books have been treasured as precious objects worthy of royal admiration. This was especially true in Muslim India, where generations of Mughal emperors-from Babur and Humayun to Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Awrangzeb-commissioned and collected volumes of richly illuminated manuscripts and lavishly illustrated folios. They assembled workshops of the leading artists and calligraphers to produce the books that filled their extensive libraries. Today, those works remain a vibrant part of India's cultural and artistic history in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

In this revised and expanded edition of his popular 1981 book, Dr. Milo Beach presents the superb collection of Mughal painting in the Freer Gallery of Art. He adds many of the outstanding works that entered the collection with the opening of the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in 1987. Together, the Freer and Sackler Galleries, the Smithsonian's museums of Asian art, have the distinction of being one of the world's leading repositories of Mughal art.

The introductory essay examines the Mughal art of the book and traces the contributions of a succession of rulers in Muslim India. To establish a broader context for these manuscripts and albums, pre-Mughal images, paintings from the Deccan and works from the later British period are included. Full-color illustrations in the catalogue section welcome close examination of the colorful and intricate details that enliven these folios. Brief artist biographies and an extensive bibliography complete this updated volume.

Milo Cleveland Beach, a museum director, teacher, and scholar of Indian painting, has written, lectured, and organized exhibitions internationally on paintings from Rajasthan and the Mughal court. Educated at Harvard University, his doctoral dissertation (subsequently published) was on Indian Painting at Bundi and Kota. He held curatorial positions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, before taking a position in 1969 at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he served as professor and chairman of the department of art. During that period he organized two major exhibitions with accompanying publications: The Grand Mogul: Imperial Painting in India 1600-1660, and The Imperial Image: Paintings for the Mughal Court. In 1984 he moved to Washington, D.C., to head the new Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution, and he eventually became director of both that museum and the Freer Gallery of Art. At this newly expanded institution, he initiated research, exhibition, education and publication programs that gave the arts of Asia greater prominence within the mainstream of cultural life in America and broke down the idea that Asian art was a topic for specialists. Since his retirement in 2001, Dr. Beach now devotes his time to research and lecturing. His recent books include King of the World-The Padshahnama: An Imperial Mughal Manuscript in the Royal Library, Windsor (published in conjunction with an exhibition shown in Washington, London, and New Delhi); Bagta and Chokha: Master Artists at Devgarh; and the forthcoming Master Artists of India (with Eberhard Fischer and B. N. Goswamy).