Ghulam Ali Khan was a nineteenth century Indian painter in

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, but spread chiefly to the west, or beyond its Bank (geography ...

. His painting career took place over the course of more than four decades, from 1817 to 1852. He was the last royal Mughal painter, and also painted in the

Company style Company style, also known as Company painting (Hindi: ''kampani kalam'') is a term for a hybrid Indo-European style of paintings made in British India by Indian artists, many of whom worked for European patrons in the East India Company or other ...

for British patrons.

Early life

Ghulam Ali Khan was born in the late eighteenth century. At this time,

Shah Alam II Shah Alam II (; 25 June 1728 – 19 November 1806), also known by his birth name Ali Gohar, or Ali Gauhar, was the seventeenth Mughal emperor and the son of Alamgir II. Shah Alam II became the emperor of a crumbling Mughal Empire. His power w ...

presided over the Mughal Empire, but in 1803 the British occupied Delhi. Khan grew up and worked in a society that included Mughal and British cultures. He was the nephew of noted Mughal painter,

Ghulam Murtaza Khan Ghulam Murtaza Khan (1760–1840) is a Mughal era, 19th century painter from Delhi. He worked under penultimate Mughal emperor Akbar Shah II. He worked under British officers, Skinner and William Fraser (British India civil servant), William Fr ...

Career

Ghulam Ali Khan was the court painter of

Mughal emperors The emperors of the Mughal Empire, who were all members of the Timurid dynasty ( House of Babur), ruled the empire from its inception on 21 April 1526 to its dissolution on 21 September 1857. They were supreme monarchs of the Mughal Empire i ...

Akbar II Akbar II (; 22 April 1760 – 28 September 1837), also known as Akbar Shah II, was the nineteenth Mughal emperor from 1806 to 1837. He was the second son of Shah Alam II and the father of Bahadur Shah II, who would eventually succeed him an ...

(reigned 1806–1837 CE) and

Bahadur Shah II Bahadur Shah II, (Abu Zafar Siraj-ud-din Muhammad; 24 October 1775 – 7 November 1862), usually referred to by his poetic title Bahadur Shah ''Zafar'' (; ''Zafar'' ), was the twentieth and last Mughal emperor and a Hindustani poet. His spous ...

(reigned 1837–1858 CE) in Delhi. As well as working for the royal Mughal court, Ghulam Ali Khan received commissions from British officers in the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...

-- particularly Colonel James Skinner and officer

William Fraser William Fraser may refer to: Military people *William W. Fraser (1844–1915), American Civil War soldier and Medal of Honor recipient *William Archibald Kenneth Fraser (1886–1969), British army officer *William Fraser (British Army officer) ( ...

-- and from regional courts, such as the court of

Jhajjar Jhajjar is a town in Jhajjar district in the Indian state of Haryana. It is a part of Delhi National Capital Region (NCR) and situated on the road connecting Rewari to Rohtak (NH-352), Loharu to Meerut (NH334B), Charkhi Dadri to Delhi and Gu ...

and

Alwar Alwar ( Rajasthani Pronunciation: �lʋəɾ is a city located in India's National Capital Region (NCR) and the administrative headquarters of Alwar District in the state of Rajasthan. It is located 150 km south of Delhi and 150 km ...

. His artwork conveyed

picturesque Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in ''Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year ...

aesthetics and incorporated a Mughal painting style (such as in royal portraiture) with the more European Company Style.

Painting Members of the Mughal Court

In the nineteenth century there was a shift in Mughal manuscript iconography that gave greater emphasis to architectural representation. The first artwork attributed to Ghulam Ali Khan is ''The'' ''Diwan-i Khan in the palace in the Delhi Fort ed Fort' from 1817''.'' The red tent in this watercolor serves as a stand-in for the emperor in his absence. He was a formal court painter since 1827 when he produced portraits for Akbar II and his son Mirza Salim. Khan signed these two portraits as "His Majesty's Painter" and "His Majesty's devoted faithful servant." A decade later in 1837 Khan painted the accession portraits of Bahadur Shah with his sons where they are set against the backdrop of the fireplace from the Zafar Mahal. He collaborated on the ''Portraits of the Exalted Emperors'', producing the visual imperial genealogy in 1851. Other subject matter included painting high class courtesans, ''tawaifs'', such as those featured in ''Mirza Fakhruddin entertained by musicians in a salon at the Zafar Mahal'', 1852.

Painting Beyond the Mughal Court

In 1827, Khan worked on a three-part painting series for Colonel Skinner memorializing portraits of Skinner's cavalry for a private album. These paintings were done in watercolor and gouache. Khan painted for Skinner again completing a portrait of the colonel in 1830. He participated in the

Fraser Album The Fraser Album is a collection of paintings commissioned by the British Indian civil servant William Fraser. It is considered among the greatest masterpieces of Company painting. This work is an important documentation of the Mughal empire to ...

project which was a collection of Delhi genre paintings. Ghulam Ali Khan's patronage continued expanding beyond Delhi especially in the 1840s. From 1840-1853, Khan participated in the illuminating of the ''

Gulistan Gulistan, Golestan or Golastan () means "flower land" in Persian language (''gol'' meaning "flower", and ''-stan'' meaning "land"). It may refer to: Places Iran "Golestan" most often refers to: *Golestan province in northeast Iran. * Goles ...

'' (also known as the ''Golestan'') manuscript for the

Raja Raja (; from , IAST ') is a noble or royal Sanskrit title historically used by some Indian subcontinent, Indian rulers and monarchs and highest-ranking nobles. The title was historically used in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. T ...

of Alwar. In the meantime, from 1840-1845 Khan also completed the watercolor of the Alwar ''gaddi'' for Banni Singh. He painted other commissions for the Alwar court, and he taught at the Alwar school of painting. His compositions featured the

Nawab Nawab is a royal title indicating a ruler, often of a South Asian state, in many ways comparable to the Western title of Prince. The relationship of a Nawab to the Emperor of India has been compared to that of the Kingdom of Saxony, Kings of ...

'Abd al-Rahman Khan (e.g. ''Nawab 'Abd al-Rahman Khan in court with the envoy of the Raja of Alwar, Capt. Alexander Heatherly'', 1852) and the Nawab of Jhajjar (such as in ''Nawab of Jhajjar astride a pet tiger,'' 1849-50).

Works

File:A tiger hunt at Jhajjar, Rohtak District, Panjab.jpg, A tiger hunt, 1820 (Victoria & Albert Museum) File:Thakur Dawlat Singh Among Courtiers.jpg, Thakur Dawlat Singh among Courtiers, 1825 (David Collection) File:Ghulam Ali Khan 003b.jpg, View of the Red Fort, from Sketches of The Delhee Palace & Delhee, 1854 File:Two miniatures. ‘Kala with Saber Drawn’ and ‘Kala in Uniform’.jpg, Kala, the Sepoy, with Saber Drawn and in Uniform. Two miniatures from the

, from the workshop of Ghulam Ali Khan Family. Delhi, 1815-1816.

The David Collection The David Collection () is a museum of fine and applied art in Copenhagen, Denmark, built around the private collections of lawyer, businessman and art collector C. L. David. The building at Kronprinsessegade 30 which houses the museum used to be ...

File:Five Recruits- Ummee Chund, Indur, Goolzaree, Bukhtawur and Juhaz - Google Art Project.jpg, Five Recruits - Ummee Chund, Indur, Goolzaree, Kukhtawur, and Juhaz; from the Fraser Album, ca. 1816 (Freer Gallery) File:Akbar II (1806-37).jpg, Portrait of Akbar II, 1827 (British Library)

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Khan, Ghulam Ali Painters from the Mughal Empire Indian male painters Indian portrait painters 19th-century Indian painters 19th-century Indian male artists Painters from Delhi 19th-century Mughal Empire people