Visions of Mughal India: The Collection of Howard Hodgkin, Ashmolean Museum - review

 
Eastern eye: A Lady Singing, Kishangarh, c.1740
22 March 2012

Howard Hodgkin says he knew he was going to be a painter at the age of five, and began collecting Indian art in his teens. These two obsessions have dominated his life ever since. When not creating his intense and highly coloured paintings, Hodgkin has assembled one of the finest collections anywhere of art from the Indian Mughal period (c1550 to 1850), shown in its entirety here.

Hodgkin says his collecting is triggered by beauty and an emotional pull rather than art historical criteria but such is his devotion that his collection contains distinct groups of most of the types of painting that flourished in the Mughal era, largely secular images and genre scenes.

The exhibition is organised according to different regions, from the imperial court in Delhi to the Punjab hills, and underlines the fact that while the key elements of Indian painting of the period — the vivid colour, exquisite decorative detail and flattened depiction of space — are common to all areas, styles and subjects vary in subtle ways.

Take his collection of paintings of elephants from the imperial Mughal court and the Rajasthani Kota school. The imperial paintings portray the animals with the same poise and delicacy as portraits of emperors and noblemen, emphasising their grandeur and importance to the court. The Rajasthani works are all about physical power — images of elephants fighting or charging in a royal lion hunt teem with energy realised with brisk drawing.

The best of all the elephant paintings is a fantasy in which a Maharao hunts with the deity Brijnathji in a forest, a complex scene featuring animals as well as groups of nobles and musicians. It’s tumultuous and serene, intimate and epic.

This and so many of the paintings reflect the very particular representation of a microcosmic world that so fascinates Hodgkin. You can spend hours absorbed in these exquisite works, and magnifying glasses available at the entrance only serve to deepen your engagement. It provides a unique insight into an artist’s lifelong passion and unrelenting pursuit of the best in Indian art — it is also an exhibition of remarkable beauty.

Until April 22 (01865 278002, ashmolean.org)

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