Enfilade

From Brill:

Friederike Weis, ed., Eighteenth-Century Indian Muraqqaʿs: Audiences, Artists, Patrons, and Collectors (Leiden: Brill, 2024), 442 pages, ISBN: 9789004715783, $162. Contents available digitally for free via open access.

Fourteen essays and one appendix discuss numerous eighteenth-century Indo-Persianate albums (muraqqaʿs) consisting of folios with paintings, calligraphic pieces, and elaborate decorative margins. These albums—now in Berlin, Baroda, London, Paris, and Manchester—were assembled for or collected by the Mughal nawabs of Awadh (Uttar Pradesh), local elites in Bengal and Bihar, as well as Europeans. The book not only presents hitherto rarely investigated material, but also provides general information and many new discoveries based on first-hand codicological study and historical research. It will significantly expand our knowledge of the production, collecting practices, and audiences of muraqqaʿs in eighteenth-century India.

Friederike Weis (PhD, Freie Universität Berlin, 2005), is a specialist in Islamic albums and manuscripts. She has published extensively on cross-cultural exchanges in Persian and Indian art history and co-edited The Diez Albums: Contexts and Contents (Brill, 2016).

c o n t e n t s

1  Introduction: Problems and Challenges in the Study of Eighteenth-Century Indian Albums — Friederike Weis

Part 1 | Albums Commissioned by Mughal Elites: Contents and Compilation Strategies
2  The Indian Paintings from the Collection of Archibald Swinton, Formerly at Kimmerghame House, Berwickshire — J.P. Losty, Malini Roy, and Friederike Weis
3  Obvious Narratives and Hidden Messages in the Large Clive Album — Axel Langer
4  Two Late Mughal Albums in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle: Further Evidence for the Collections of Nawab Asaf al-Dawla — Emily Hannam
5  Mughal Art on Its own Terms: Reflections on an Album Folio — Laura E. Parodi

Part 2 | Albums of Foreign Elites: Changes and Challenges
6  Three Albums of Seigneur Gentil and Colonel Polier: Cultural Exchanges in Late Eighteenth-Century India — Susan Stronge
7  To Be Viewed from Both Ends: The Surviving Polier Albums —Friederike Weis
8  A Newly Identified Muraqqaʿ Assembled for Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier in the British Museum — Malini Roy and Jake Benson
9  Like a Garden Bedecked: Floral Margins in the Muraqqaʿs of Antoine Polier — Isabelle Imbert

Part 3 | Masters of Calligraphy and Painting: Between Historicism and Innovation
10  The Earlier Calligraphies in the Berlin Albums: Reflections on their Origins and Purpose in a Muraqqaʿ — Claus-Peter Haase
11  Polier’s Posterior Album: Rylands Persian MS 10 — Jake Benson
12  Expanding the Canon: Mir Muhammad Husayn ʿAta Khan and the Polier Albums — Will Kwiatkowski
13  Mihr Chand’s Copies and Adaptations of Earlier Mughal Paintings — John Seyller

Part 4 | Spaces and Gazes: Reading Imagined Worlds
14  The Spaces in Between: A Yogini of Lucknow for Antoine Polier —Molly Aitken
15  Building Worlds: Reading Spatiality, Power, and Gaze in Eighteenth-Century Paintings — Parul Singh

Appendix | Inscriptions and Seal Impressions in the Berlin Albums I. 4589, I. 4591, I. 4592, I 5001, and I. 4600 — Will Kwiatkowski and Friederike Weis

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