Govardhan (Mughal painter)

A page of 1609 in the Berlin volume of Jahangir's albums tells us that Govardhan was a khanazad, "house-born", and that his father was Bhavani Das, a minor Akbar-period artist. ¹ His portrait by Daulat, about 1605–9, is in the margins of the Gulshan Album. ²

For Milo Cleveland Beach, Govardhan, unlike Hashim or Bichitr, is no detached observer: his involvement with his subjects is evident, and most of his works show people conversing or interacting. In the borders of the Los Angeles leaf from Jahangir's album, about 1609, there is intense if unspoken communication among the figures, and in the Ascetics the holy man stares straight out at us. ^{3 1} What sets him apart from the Safavids is the penetration of his portraiture: where a Persian work aims at refined general types, he explores individuality. ³

His works after 1620 are more highly worked, sometimes so modelled that figures seem unnatural, as in A Prince Visiting a Hermitage of about 1635–40; among his best known are Shah Jahan Riding with Prince Dara Shikoh in the Minto Album, about 1638, and its pair, Timur Riding with an Attendant, in a deliberately Timurid manner. ^{4 1 5} Beach finds his manner more responsive to his own enthusiasms than that of his peers and says he needs a far longer study. ¹