Johnson 1,30

Squirrels in a plane tree.

Attributed to Abu’l Hasan Nadir al-Zaman, Mughal, 1605-08.

Richard Johnson Collection. Purchased 1807.

Numbered 7 in Persian inventory note; inscribed on reverse in Persian: ‘‘amal-i nadir al-‘asr nadir al-zaman’ (the work of the Wonder of the Age, the Wonder of the Time); and: ‘varaq-i’ ... ‘7’ (page ... 7).

Gouache with gold; a small rectangle of the painted surface at the bottom left corner, perhaps once bearing an inscription or signature, has been excised and coloured in; on an 18th-century album page with borders of blue and plain paper sprinkled with gold.

362 by 225 mm; page 470 by 322 mm.

Reproduced: Brown (1924), pl.XV; Heath (1925), frontispiece; Smith (1930), pl.152; Wilkinson (1948), pl.6; W.G. Archer (1960), pl.25; Welch (1963), no.35; Welch (1978), pl.21; Losty (1986), 38; Losty and Leach (1998), pl. 4. See J.P. Losty, ‘Abu’l Hasan’, in: ‘Master Artists of the Imperial Mughal Court’, ed. P. Pal, Bombay, 1991, pp. 69-86.

Listed: Ashton (1950), no.737; Das (1974), no.15; Beach (1978), 90.

In the upper branches of a ‘chenar’ tree a group of squirrels is gambolling, two of ten young ones looking out from a hole in the trunk to confront one of two adults. In the foreground a barefooted man, dressed in two shades of brown with a fur-lined cap, is striving to climb the base of the tree. The surrounding landscape with rocks is filled with animals and birds; four wild goats are in a glade on the right, and the outer branches of the tree shelter numerous species of birds. The five~pointed leaves are in many cases turning yellow and orange; the gold sky has a narrow strip of blue at the top.

Note: While this picture is generally accepted as one of the most delightful of all Mughal miniatures, the attribution to Jahangir’s most admired artist Abu’l Hasan Nadir al-Zaman is problematic. There can be little doubt that the excised area at the bottom left corner bore at least an inscription and probably a signature. The corner had presumably already been cut away at the time of mounting, for unless the inscription had named a less esteemed artist there would be little motive for removing it in order to upgrade the attribution. The album page on which the miniature is mounted is of eighteenth-century manufacture. The ambiguous attribution written in Persian on the reverse is of the same period and puts together the two titles ‘nadir al-‘asr’ and’ nadir al-zaman’. The latter was granted by Jahangir to Abu’l Hasan and has since been used quite exclusively in reference to him, but the former is a title that has been employed more loosely. The title ‘nadir al-‘asr’ was granted to Mansur (Jahangir (1909-14), II, 20) but has since been used more freely in conjunction with the names of other artists of renown, for instance Farrukh Beg (King’s College, Cambridge, Ms.Pote 153, Skelton (1957), fig.4). The most plausible interpretation of the inscription is therefore not that the picture is by the hands of two artists, but that the attribution is to Nadir al-Zaman with the supporting honorific ‘nadir al-‘asr.’

The traditional interpretation of the subject as a hunter climbing a tree to catch squirrels is, ‘prima facie’, unlikely; the chances of a hunter being able to scale the trunk of such a tree, and if successful to catch a squirrel bare-handed, seem slim. A further examination of the composition and subject matter of the picture is therefore required. It is of unusually large size, which almost excludes the possibility of any intended inclusion in a contemporary manuscript. In view of this, and the fact that such extensive care has clearly been expended on the painting, the subject probably carried a significance beyond the face value of its subject. Consideration of the picture’s components reveals foreign origins. The ‘chenar’ tree was to be found in India at the time, and its portrayal was not uncommon in the painting of sixteenth-century Persia and Mughal India. But squirrels are a more unusual subject. They are not normally hunted in India, for either food or captivity. In tracing the species it was noted that they are depicted with tufted ears, and no Indian squirrel of this brownish colour has this feature. The British Museum, Natural History, has confirmed that the species depicted is the common red squirrel (‘Scirus vulgaris),’ found in Europe and North Asia, but not in either Persia or India. Nor is there any reason to suppose that it was native to India even four centuries ago. Jahangir is well known for his interest in natural history, and caged specimens of foreign squirrels would not have been out of place in his time. But it is difficult to see how this great variety of creatures in natural poses could have been so convincingly worked up from caged specimens. The hunter himself is not an Indian figure, but would be quite at home in a sixteenth-century engraving by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, or a hunting scene by Philipp Galle after J. van der Straat. The most probable explanation is that the picture was built up from European sources which have not yet been identified. The large scale of the squirrels compared with the hunter indicate that a single European print or drawing may not have been used, but that more than one picture was followed in whole or part. When the tree and figure are accepted as European derivatives it becomes clear that the dwarfed landscape in the artist’s home style has been fitted around the central theme.

When these observations are taken into account, the interpretation of the picture as squirrel-hunting or even bird-nesting becomes inadequate. The famous Jahangir period allegorical pictures by Abu’l Hasan and Bichitr in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (MS. 7, no.15), and the Freer Gallery, Washington (45,15), are notable for their incorporation of European elements. It was W.G. Archer who first suggested that this painting could well be an allegory in the same tradition, though less obviously presented and on a much larger scale. The message of the picture must be of a more subtle and less explicit nature, and could itself have been borrowed from Europe; here is the free and innocent world of nature contrasted with the despicable state of man, his hopeless strivings spurred on by wicked intentions.