AN ILLUSTRATION DEPICTING THE POET JAMI WITH COMPANIONS IN A LANDSCAPE BY BICHITR

Good overall condition. Slight discoloration to the white on the carpet as visible in catalog illustration. Stains to the sky, abrasions to the green background and further abrasions to the clothes and beards of the figures, all clearly visible in catalog illustration. The colors are slightly lighter and brighter in reality. Discoloration to the later folio border due to age. Exhibited in a temporary frame.
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Four poets in discussion (speaking to another unseen group of four poets to the right) against a soft green hillside with trees set against a blue sky filled with passing clouds.

The present miniature is an extremely important rediscovered Shah Jahan period work of superb quality which bears the signature inscription of Bichitr, an artist whose work spanned the reigns of two Mughal Emperors Jahangir and Shah Jahan. 

Previously believed to have been “lost,” the painting depicts the Persian poet Jami with his companions in a landscape which is a pendant (companion) page to a folio from the Late Shah Jahan Album in the Chester Beatty Library which similarly depicts the elderly poet Sa’di also with companions (7B.24). The present work was originally the left hand page of a double page and has been remargined as a right hand folio in Sixteenth Century Khurasan style with salmon-light pink inner borders with gold foliate scrolling designs within gold, black and silver ruled lines. A second inner border on buff with flecked gold with ruled lines. Outer salmon-light pink borders containing five cartouches in white and blue with gold of delicate floral arabesques and finely depicted intertwining gold leaf floral sprays.

Both L. Leach and E. Wright note that the Chester Beatty Library page was once the companion to another painting by Bichitr that showed the poet Jami (as published by Richard Ettinghausen, The Emperor’s Choice, De Artibus Opuscula 40, 1961, vol. II, fig. 4) but lost since then. Its rediscovery now provides an highly important addition to Bichitr’s established body of work. The combined images when placed side by side show two of the greatest Persian poets, Sa‘di and Jami, with their companions facing each other across the double album leaves against a green hillside. The compositions match exactly, as do the dimensions, the palette and style and importantly the inscriptions which are in the same hand and which link the two folios in terms of their content. 

The inscription on our present work (beginning on the lower area below the figures) reads as follows “... hazrat mawlana ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami bi-raqam Bichitr bandieh” (and continuing above the figures) Shah Jahan Padshah Sahib Qiran Thani”. 

Translation: “... his excellency the mawlana ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami by the pen of Bichitr the servant of Emperor Shah Jahan the Second Timur” (Sahib Qiran was a name for Timur - ancestor of the Mughals). 

The inscription on the Chester Beatty Library folio translates as follows, “picture of his excellency Shaykh Sa‘di the work of the painter Bichitr the slave of the Emperor Shah Jahan warrior for the faith.”

The present folio and Beatty inscriptions both describe the sitter as “hazrat” and name the artist as Bichitr, as “slave of Emperor Shah Jahan” and then describing Shah Jahan in two different  honorific complimentary terms, one as “Warrior for the Faith” the other as “the Second Timur”. Thus the two folios taken together are archetypal examples of the manner in which royal Mughal albums were assembled, with the facing pages linked in terms of composition, style, identity of the sitters, inscriptions and size.

The present work is clearly linked not only to its corresponding folio in the Beatty Library but also to five other works by Bichitr (or Abu’l Hasan) that share highly similar thematic, compositional and figural features. Firstly, a scene of Sufis presenting a book to Jahangir by Abu’l Hasan of ca. 1615 (the left half of a double page in the Walters Art Gallery Baltimore (acc. no. W.668 f.37, see Beach, 2011, p.224, fig.13) depicting eight poets/sufis and a Mughal courtier, seven of whom also appear (with almost identical faces, garments and poses) in the present work or its pendant in Dublin. 

The exactness of the similarities of the poses and juxtapositions of the figures among these three works indicates a very strong link between them, and the fact that many of the figures are in the same poses but in reverse implies the use of pouncing or a similar technique.

Another work by Bichitr also links to the present example and its Dublin counterpart. It is a well-known allegorical scene of Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Sheikh to Kings ca. 1615-20 in the Freer Gallery of Art (acc. no. F.1942.15 see M. Beach, The Imperial Image: Paintings for the Mughal Court, Washington, 2012 no. 22C, pp.126-7).  In this work the figure of the bearded sufi is very similar to the central seated figure in the Beatty work while the figure of the Turkish Sultan is very similar to the seated figure in profile with turban and green robe in the present work.

Finally a further page from the Late Shah Jahan Album in the Musée Guimet Paris is ascribed to Bichitr ca. 1640-50 depicting two sufis or poets conversing against a soft green hillside with very similar figural types, faces and background foliage to our present work (see A. Okada 1992) which may have originally been the facing page to another similar Late Shah Jahan Album page in the Chester Beatty Library that shows Mullah Shah and companions under a tree and was also attributed to Bichitr by Leach (1995).

Thus there are at least seven paintings signed, ascribed or attributed to Bichitr (or Abu’l Hasan) which are closely linked in terms of their themes, figures, style, garments, compositions and poses, providing a fascinating insight into the artistic practices of the royal atelier and the interests of the royal patron Shah Jahan.

Wright suggests that there was a section of the Late Shah Jahan album devoted to Sufis and poets and the multiple links between the above works (as well as several others ie: CBL 7B.26 there attributed to Govardhan) would certainly support this theory. It would also correspond to known methods of album assembly in which both contemporary (i.e. circa 1640-50) works and earlier works by the same artists and/or on the same themes were included.

Refer to L. Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, 1995, no.3.57, p.445; Leach, op.cit. no.3.58, pp.444 – 446; E. Wright, Muraqqa: Imperial Mughal Albums from the Chester Beatty Library, Alexandria, 2008,  no.63B,  p.389; Wright, op.cit. p.460. no.2.; R. Ettinghausen, “The Emperor’s Choice” in De Artibus Opuscula (Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky), 40, 1961, vol.II, fig.4; M. Beach,“Aqa Reza and Abu’l Hasan” in  Beach, Fischer, Goswamy and Britschgi, Masters of Indian Painting 1100-1650, Artibus Asiae Supplementum 48 I, Zurich, 2011, p.224, fig.13 and A. Heeramaneck, Masterpieces of Indian Painting formerly in the Nasli M. Heramaneck Collections, Verona, 1984, p. 231, pl. 211.

With many thanks to Marcus Fraser for his important contribution to this entry.