Hashim (Mir Hashim, Mughal painter)

All works ascribable to Hashim are portraits, most of them single figures on a plain background; only one is dated by inscription, so Milo Cleveland Beach dates the rest by the age of the sitter. ² Among the earliest attributed to him are the two portraits of Jahangir with a globe in the Minto Album, about 1620, and a portrait of Sultan Muhammad Qutb Shah of Golconda. ³

His technique grew ever more secure: the portraits of Shah Jahan, Dara Shikoh and An Abyssinian are executed with breathtaking control but little warmth, and for Beach he is an even more detached observer than Bichitr, unlike Govardhan. ² In An Abyssinian there is no background to divert the eye, and the rendering of sash and dagger becomes a major visual element; Stuart C. Welch has suggested the sitter is Fath Khan, son of Malik Ambar. ^{1 2} Shah Jahan in Old Age, about 1650–55, is for Beach the culmination of the trend: an icon of the emperor that projects his perfected general image, not his individuality, like a temple sculpture. ^{1 4} Because so many inscriptions name him and his range is so narrow, his lesser authentic works are hard to tell from faithful later copies. ²