Paintings and pots from other places

This lesson asks you to be aware of works of art and artistic traditions from diverse communities, times and places. The museum offers one painting tradition of India, Mughal painting, and one pottery tradition of the Ottoman lands. The other examples in the curriculum are for your class to bring. ¹

Look at a painting or a piece of pottery and name what you see: a shape, a colour, a subject. Then ask what might tell you where and when it was made.

Look at three elephants painted in India. The art historian Milo Cleveland Beach says one is a general type, one stays a general symbol, and the Mughal one is a particular elephant in a fairly natural space ^{2 3}. That is how he describes Mughal painting. Now look at pottery from the Ottoman lands. R. L. Hobson says that on one group of it a brilliant tomato red sits beside flowers you can name: the rose, the carnation, the tulip and the hyacinth ⁴. This is Iznik pottery.

On this pottery you can name the rose, the carnation, the tulip and the hyacinth. Which flower would you paint on a bowl for a friend, and why would you choose it?

• Mughal painting: the three elephants, and how the Mughal style began.
• Iznik pottery: the tomato red, the flowers, and three groups of the pottery.

Read about Mughal painting and about Iznik pottery. Draw an animal or a flower, choose whether to show one particular one or a general type, and say why.