The role of the portrait in India between 1560 and 1860 served as an official chronicle or eye-witness account, as a means of revealing the intimate moments of everyday life, and as a tool for propaganda. Yet the proliferation and mastery of Indian portraiture in the Mughal and Rajput courts brought a new level of artistry and style to the genre. The rise of the 'observed' portrait, brought about largely through European influences, enabled Mughal artists to address realism, which in turn led to the empathy portrait. This depicted the sitter as a psychological entity for the first time in Indian art, revealing an individual's failibility and compassion, or simply recorded how sitters really looked.

Table of Contents

Foreword Map Chronology Introduction/Kapil Jariwala The Portrait in Early India/Robert Skelton Portraiture at the Mughal Court/Susan Stronge Portraiture at the Rajput Courts/Rosemary Crill Indian Portraiture in the British Period/J.P. Losty Plates Appendix: The Materials and Techniques of Indian Painting/ Kapil Jariwala Bibliography Index

Author Biography

Rosemary Crill is a Senior Curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Her publications include Chintz: Indian Textiles for the West and Marwar Painting. Kapil Jariwala is an independent curator whose recent publications include Cultural Ties and Film Fantastic: Indian Movie Poster Art. Jeremiah Losty is former Head of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at the British Library, where he curated the Ramayana exhibition in 2008. Robert Skelton is one of the foremost post-war authorities on Indian art, and is a former Keeper of the India Department at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Susan Stronge is a Senior Curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum and has written extensively on Indian art and culture.