Page 19 - Bonhams NYC Indian and Himalayan Art March 2019

Babur’s memoirs, written in his ancestral Turki, were faithfully translated
into Persian and illustrated by the finest court painters at the request
of his grandson, Akbar. This painting is from the first of the four
main Baburnama manuscripts, and as such the painting has a more
animated and unreserved style than those in later texts. Twenty other
pages from this initial manuscript are held in the Victoria & Albert
Museum (Stronge, Painting for the Mughal Emperor, London, 2002,
pp.86-91).

Of these illustrated folios in the Baburnama depicting India’s flora and
fauna, Smart writes:

“The charm and detachment of the paintings of the animals, birds,
and plants that Babur described upon his arrival in Hindustan offer
the viewer a refreshing change from the complexities and emotions
of the narrative paintings. While the scenes of activity make direct
statements about Babur’s life, the flora and fauna tell much about
his thoughts, interests, and powers of observation. The text is a
long list of tropical species native to the subcontinent and unknown
in Central Asia, with descriptions of their unusual characteristics.
Babur was fascinated by natural history, and wrote in considerable
detail about the more interesting varieties of Indian wild life. Akbar’s
artists illustrated this section of the Baburnama with individual
paintings of most of the species described by Babur, aptly realistic,
and displaying an ability to observe and record, comparable to the
observations in Babur’s writings. Babur would have been delighted
with the illustrations.”
(Smart, Paintings from the Barburnama, Ph. D. thesis, S.O.A.S.,
University of London, 1977, pp.266-7).

Published
J.P. Losty, Indian and Persian Painting 1590-1840, Oliver Forge and
Brendan Lynch Ltd, New York, 2014, pp.2-3.

Provenance
Manuscript dispersed in 1913
Hagop Kevorkian, New York
Sotheby’s, London, 7 December 1970, lot 96
Sotheby’s, London, 27 April 1981, lot 65
Colnaghi Ltd, London, 1981-3
Private Virginia Collection

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