Beach, Milo Cleveland — Early Mughal Painting

Book Good Dust Jacket Included Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London for the Asia Society English text.; Hardcover (with dust jacket).; 18 x 26 cm.; 0.75 kg.; 164 pages with black and white illustrations.; Ex-library book. Used with signs of wear on the exterior and interior. The exterior shows minor edge wear, scuffs and scratches. The dust jacket has a sticker with a reference glued and tapped to the middle of the spine. Ex-library stickers glued to the rear of the front and back cover. Two stickers glued to the front free endpaper. Signs of glue tape removed on the rear of the front and back cover. Remain interior in good condition with minor signs of wear. Good readable/working copy.; One of the minor miracles of art history is the extraordinary flowering of Indian painting that began in the mid-sixteenth century under the early Mughal emperors of India, notably Akbar the Great. Only in recent decades has the consummate artistry of early Mughal painting come to be widely appreciated in the West. Scholars have noted the innovations departures from both Islamic and native Indian tradition - of the new, highly distinctive school of painting, among them natural history studies, a concern for portraiture, and the documentation of contemporary court events. Milo Beach traces, with an abundance of captivating illustrations, the evolution of the Mughal style. While acknowledging the influence of Ak- bar's interests and changing tastes (related in turn to historical and biographical circumstances), he shows that many of the new tendencies were evident during the short reign of Akbar's father, the Emperor Humayun, whose role as patron of the arts is thereby reassessed. Beach also stresses the traditionalism of the individual painters, who only gradually changed their concepts and compositions in response to foreign influences and to imperial taste. Mughal art, he affirms, can no longer be regarded as simply a reflection of its imperial patrons. The book takes account of recently discovered material unknown a decade ago, and reproduces for the first time important paintings from unpublished manuscripts and albums. It will appeal to the general reader as well as the scholar.