Manohar (Mughal painter)

Glenn D. Lowry, who wrote the catalogue's Manohar essay, calls him a subtle and extremely gifted painter whose primary interest was the majesty and decorum of the imperial Mughal court. He was the son of Basawan, one of the foremost artists of the late sixteenth century and one of the two Indian painters most esteemed by Akbar. ^{2 1}

Two portraits place his birth in the late 1560s: a self-portrait in a Gulistan of Sa'di dated 1581–82 showing a boy of twelve or thirteen, and a portrait by Daulat in the Gulshan Album of about 1605–9. His career spans at least four decades, from the early 1580s to the 1620s. ^{1 3}

Basawan was probably his first teacher, and they worked together on several paintings, but where Basawan explored deep space and volume, Manohar cared for line and surface pattern, building shallow spaces with oblique parallel lines, as in Akbar Listening to a Courtier of about 1602. ^{3 4} His portraits in the Darbar of Jahangir are extraordinary draughtsmanship, yet his view of mankind is one of courtly elegance, better at textures and jewels than at personality; Milo Cleveland Beach thinks that, trained under Akbar, he could not fully adapt to Jahangir's demands for intensified naturalism. ^{2 4} There is no firm evidence of his activity after about 1620. ⁵