Portrait of Shah Jahan

Entry

Most of the twenty-three known drawings by Rembrandt after Mughal paintings are portraits of Mughal rulers and courtiers at the seventeenth-century courts of Emperor Jahangir (1569-1627) and his son and successor, Shah Jahan (1592-1666). Besides the twenty-one examples assembled by Otto and Eva Benesch in the 1973 edition of the Rembrandt drawings corpus,⁴ two others have since been identified: the Medallion Portrait of Muhammad Adil Shah of Bijpur, formerly in the collection of Mrs Christian Aall in New York, later in that of Dr William K. Ehrenfeld (a noted collector of Indian paintings), and now in the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (inv. no. 2000.70),⁵ and another, representing two female heads, which was seen in a French private collection by Frits Lugt in 1966 and by Martin Royalton-Kisch in 2002. There were once at least two more, for in 1747 a ‘book of lndian drawings by Rembrandt, 25 in number’, was briefly offered for auction in 1747 from the collection of the British portraitist and connoisseur Jonathan Richardson the elder.⁶

Rembrandt himself owned what are presumed to have been the original models from which his series of drawings was made. The Mughal paintings were described as ‘curious miniature drawings’ in the inventory of his household goods made on 25-26 July 1656 following his bankruptcy: ‘An album filled with curious miniature drawings, together with woodcut and copper engravings of various sorts of costumes’.⁷ The album’s prints of figures in different costumes might well have included the series of twelve figures in Italian dress by an anonymous engraver after drawings by Rembrandt’s teacher, Pieter Lastman.⁸ The Mughal paintings in Rembrandt’s collection had probably arrived in the Dutch Republic via Dutch artists who worked for the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC or Dutch East India Company), which had an office in Agra, and later for Shah Jahan.⁹ It is not known what happened to Rembrandt’s ‘curious miniature drawings’ after the sale of the works on paper from his collection on 20 December 1658.¹⁰ The group was probably split up and dispersed to various collections.

Some of Rembrandt’s drawings closely resemble the Mughal paintings that form part of the wall decoration of Schloss Schönbrunn, near Vienna.¹¹ Shortly before 1762, Empress Maria Theresa had the room now called the Millionenzimmer decorated with 266 Mughal paintings mounted in rocaille-shaped cartouches within carved wooden frames. We cannot, however, be certain that these versions are any of the ones that Rembrandt actually owned, for such Mughal art works were often copied and repeated by local artists with very little variation (sometimes even generations later), and many of Rembrandt’s drawings do not correspond precisely with those now in Schönbrunn. Moreover, the Schönbrunn paintings are now considered to be mostly provincial work of the late seventeenth or early eighteenth centuries, that is, too late for Rembrandt to have possessed them.¹² However, they do have inscriptions in Dutch on their versos.

The relationship between Rembrandt’s drawings and his Mughal prototypes is interesting. Since there is a clear difference in style, they can scarcely be termed ‘copies’ in the strict sense of the word. Rembrandt basically remained true to his own style and was not interested in copying the paintings as accurately as possible. Inspired by his models, he created a new and unique type of drawing, recording the figures as if they had been sketched from life rather than from a two-dimensional source. Yet the technique of the originals did influence Rembrandt’s style. This can be seen in the fine handling of line and in the careful, but fluent layers of subtly coloured washes. It is, of course, unfair to characterize the Mughal models as stiff in comparison to Rembrandt’s drawings, as some authors have done: they reflect the established modes of expression for Mughal artists at the time. But Rembrandt’s experience of drawing from life led him to make the poses of the Indian figures more natural as he was copying them.¹³ He lent their faces the same expressive quality that he would have given a living model.

Rembrandt’s copies are usually dated to about 1656, the year of the bankruptcy inventory and the year of a dated etching, Abraham Entertaining the Angels (e.g. inv. no. RP-P-1954-135),¹⁴ whose composition and individual figures seem to depend on one of the drawn copies showing four Mughal elders, now in the British Museum in London (inv. no. 1895,0915.1275).¹⁵ However, since Rembrandt’s collection of works on paper was not sold until 1658, he could have carried on making copies of the Mughal originals for at least another couple of years. The style of the drawings resembles other drawings from the 1650s and, to some extent, from the 1660s. These copies, in turn, may have influenced Rembrandt’s own drawings to some degree.¹⁶ One characteristic of the copies is that no backgrounds have been indicated, although they appear in many of the known Mughal models. Only the figures were important to Rembrandt as can be seen after all in many of his drawings in which only figures and their interrelationships are depicted.

The Rijksprentenkabinet owns four drawings with Mughal subjects, three of which bear the mark of Jonathan Richardson the elder and must surely have been part of the album from his collection offered from sale in 1747 (the present sheet and inv. nos. RP-T-1961-82 and RP-T-1961-83). The fourth, Indian Archer (inv. no. RP-T-1897-A-3203), does not. Nor is the mark present on the example in the Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum in Cambridge (MA) (inv. no. 1932.366).¹⁷ The absence of the Richardson mark on both sheets, and the previous misidentification of their support as European paper, led some scholars to doubt the attribution to Rembrandt.¹⁸ However, it merely suggests either that the pair never belonged to Richardson, or that they were once the left half of sheets that were later cut in two, with the mark – always applied on the right side or centre of the sheet – remaining only on the other half. Certainly there are examples of drawings that combine two figures, such as Emperor Jahangir Receiving an Officer and Two Mughal Noblemen, in the British Museum (inv. nos. Gg,2.263 and 1895,0915.1281),¹⁹ and Two Mughal Noblemen in The Morgan Library & Museum in New York (inv. no. I, 208).²⁰ In addition, another sheet in The Morgan, Indian Warrior with a Shield (inv. no. I, 207),²¹ shows clear traces of another figure on the right trimmed edge.

Four of the known drawings – including the present sheet and inv. no. RP-T-1961-83 – bear the mark of Richard Houlditch.²² Until recently, it was assumed that this was Richard Houlditch the elder (c. 1659-1736), who would have owned the drawings before Richardson. The latest research, however, shows that although the collection was begun by Richard the elder, it was his son, Richard Houlditch the younger (d. 1760), who applied the collector’s mark,²³ who was an active buyer at the 1747 Richardson sale and who may have got hold of some of the sheets from the withdrawn album of Rembrandt drawings through the mediation of Richardson’s son, Jonathan Richardson the younger. Another four of the Mughal subjects – including one in the British Museum (inv. no. 1910,0212.182),²⁴ long paired with inv. no. RP-T-1961-83 – were eventually owned by Thomas Hudson, the brother-in-law of Jonathan Richardson the younger and the former pupil of his father.

Jahangir’s encouragement of portraiture during his reign is reflected in the museum’s two portraits of his son, Shah Jahan: the present sheet and that in which he is depicted with one of his sons (inv. no. RP-T-1961-83). Shah Jahan was widely considered one of the greatest Mughal rulers, renowned for the monuments he had built, including the Taj Mahal, the tomb for his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal (1593-1631), the Red Fort and the mausoleum of his father, Jahangir.

Peter Schatborn, 2017