Indian Albums of the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century between Tradition and Documentation: The Polier- and Swinton-Albums in the Berlin State Museums

• Applicant: Dr. Friederike Weis
• Subject Area: Art History
• Term: since 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 416816602

The production of Persianate albums (muraqqaʿs) containing pictures and calligraphies has traditionally been associated with courtly workshops, as was also the case in Mughal India. However, imperial Mughal book production decreased around the mid-18th century due to political upheavals, so that many Europeans in the service of colonial powers assumed this tradition in that they themselves collected albums or commissioned them from local artists. There are twenty such albums in the Museums of Asian and Islamic Art in Berlin; ten of them belonged to Antoine-Louis Henri Polier (1741-95) and eight to Archibald Swinton (1731-1804), both British East India Company officers.Previous scholarship has focused on the stylistic and iconographic analysis of single images rather than exploring these albums as gesamtkunstwerke. Hence, this project compares the Berlin albums in their entirety with Indian muraqqaʿs from other collections that were compiled between c. 1760 and 1790, either for Europeans or for the Indian elite in the Mughal provinces. These also include another eight Polier albums and several disbound leaves from Swinton’s possession. The provenance of the albums and of separate leaves from previous albums is to be determined based on ownership notes, seal impressions, bindings and characteristic decorative borders. By means of comparative analysis, the project seeks not only to understand the networks of exchange among collectors and artists, but also to determine the specific preferences of European and Indian patrons. This leads to the question of the purposes that Polier, Swinton and other Europeans, such as Jean-Baptiste Joseph Gentil (1726-99), Sir Elijah Impey (1732-1809) and Richard Johnson (1753-1807) assigned to their Indian muraqqaʿs. Did they consider them appropriated “cultural capital” meant to strengthen their social positions in India, private records of their stay after their return, or “ethnographic” documents to be used for Indological studies?To answer this question, three methodological stages are envisaged: firstly, a comprehensive investigation of the muraqqaʿs of the second half of the 18th century against the background of the Mughal album tradition, which highlights innovative internal structures and often repeated motifs and calligraphic specimens; secondly, the outlining of documentary, ethnographic and exoticizing characteristics, as also apparent in the titles beneath the images; and, thirdly, the examination of contemporary textual sources that provide information on the perception of India through the lens of Polier, Swinton and other European collectors, their relationships and goals.This research project thus seeks to situate Polier’s and Swinton’s muraqqaʿs between the two poles of contemporary documentation and Mughal artistic conventions, as viewed from both European-colonial and Indian perspectives.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants