Bichitr (Mughal painter)

The earliest works securely by Bichitr are in a fully mature, if experimental, style, followed almost at once by the brilliant portraits for which he is best known. A self-portrait in Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaikh to Kings (Freer Gallery) shows a man of no more than thirty; Milo Cleveland Beach argues for a date of about 1615–20, since Shaikh Husain Ajmeri died about 1620 and the portrait of James I in it was probably copied from a painting brought by Sir Thomas Roe. ^{1 3} Beach infers from his dress that he was a Hindu. ¹

In the portraits of the 1630s — among them Shah Jahan inscribed by the emperor "a good portrait of me in my fortieth year" (1631) and Shah Shuja Enthroned with Maharaja Gaj Singh (1638) — Bichitr paints with a brilliant but hard line and bold patterns, to an effect of cold formality, unlike the soft Balchand. ^{1 2} He drew on European prints and paintings for shading and copied motifs from Dürer and John de Critz's portrait of James I. ² His Asaf Khan in the Minto Album, about 1628–30, marks for Beach the transition from his softer, more romantic early style to the immaculate, restrained works after 1630; he was still painting in the 1640s. ^{4 2}