Indian Albums of the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century between Tradition and Documentation: The Polier- and Swinton-Albums in the Berlin State Museums
Final Report Abstract
The project researched twenty albums with miniatures and calligraphies (muraqqaʿs) that were brought to Europe from India in the second half of the 18th century by the Swiss architect Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier (1741–1795) and the Scottish surgeon Archibald Swinton (1731– 1804). The albums are now divided between the two Berlin museums for Islamic and Asian Art (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin). Their production contexts, function and reception were analysed in comparison with other Indian muraqqaʿs from other collections. According to current knowledge, Indian artists produced most of the albums from old and new materials for British and French colonial servants; only a comparatively small number were made for Indian commissioners during this period. The modes of communication are correspondingly different. The albums for Indian elites focussed on calligraphy in various ducti as well as thematically paired portraits and depictions of animals in the double-sided presentation form of Mughal muraqqaʿs. The albums for Europeans, on the other hand, pursued a more historical-ethnographic perspective, as the French and Persian title inscriptions on the album pages by Polier and Jean- Baptiste Joseph Gentil (1726–1799) show, and combined calligraphy and painting – framed by heterogeneous margins – according to formal aesthetic criteria. Large numbers of digital copies of intact and scattered albums were recorded in various categories and provenance was clarified by types of margins, seals and ownership notes. While the first phase of the project laid the codicological and thematic groundwork, the second phase involved the discovery of more albums through library visits in London, Manchester, Oxford and Paris, and the detailed analysis of unpublished primary sources such as letters from East India Company officials, a list of 25 albums from the Polier estate, and handwritten notes by Gentil and Swinton. The results show that the albums were used less as 'cultural capital' in colonial and Indian networks than previously thought, as indicated by their limited circulation and the paucity of textual sources on their contemporary reception. Rather, they served primarily as private treasures and Indian memorabilia. A hybrid workshop, organised by the project’s principal investigator at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin in September 2021, provided an important impetus for advancing internationally networked research on these albums. The recently published open access volume Eighteenth-Century Indian Muraqqaʿs. Audiences – Artists – Patrons and Collectors bears witness to this fruitful collaboration with fourteen fundamental analyses and one appendix.
Publications
-
Podcast „Gebundene Schönheit“ vom 02.11.2019 in der Reihe „Tell me a history – Erzähl mir eine Geschichte“: Interviews mit Wissenschaflter*innen zur Kultur und Geschichte der islamischen Welt von Nadja Danilenko
Friederike Weis
-
Confident Women in Indo-Persianate Albums. Visual Metaphors or Ethnography?, in: Motion. Transformation, hrsg.v. Marzia Faietti and Gerhard Wolf, Bologna, Bd. 1, 93-98 [ISBN online 9788869237928]
Friederike Weis
-
Medienstation im Humboldt Forum: „Ragamala: Gemalte indische Melodien aus dem 18. Jahrhundert“
Friederike Weis
-
A Crouching Woman at Her Toilette: Venus or Radha? Cross-Cultural Connoisseurship of an Indian Album Motif. Networks and Practices of Connoisseurship in the Global Eighteenth Century, 69-86. De Gruyter.
Weis, Friederike
-
Cruel Conquerors and a Solomonic Saint: European Collectors’ Interests in Indian Muraqqaʿs. Manuscript Albums and their Cultural Contexts, 125-166. De Gruyter.
Weis, Friederike
-
Interview mit Elena Then: „Forschungsfragen: Buchkunst en miniature“, in SPKMagazin vom 30.05.2023
Friederike Weis & Elena Then
-
Beauty nach Peter Lely - Aus einem Album für Antoine-Louis-Henri Polier, in: Blick Richtung Europa? Dreißig "außereuropäische" Objekte geben Antwort (Römische Studien der Bibliotheca Hertziana, vol. 52), hrsg. v. Tanja Michalsky und Matthias Weiß, München: Hirmer, 146-155
Friederike Weis
-
Inscriptions and Seal Impressions in the Berlin Albums I. 4589, I. 4591, I. 4592, I 5001, and I. 4600. Eighteenth-Century Indian Muraqqaʿs, 393-403. BRILL.
Kwiatkowski, Will & Weis, Friederike
-
Introduction: Problems and Challenges in the Study of Eighteenth-Century Indian Albums. Eighteenth-Century Indian Muraqqaʿs, 3-9. BRILL.
Weis, Friederike
-
The Indian Paintings from the Collection of Archibald Swinton, Formerly at Kimmerghame House, Berwickshire. Eighteenth-Century Indian Muraqqaʿs, 10-40. BRILL.
Losty, J.P.; Roy, Malini & Weis, Friederike
-
To Be Viewed from Both Ends: The Surviving Polier Albums. Eighteenth-Century Indian Muraqqaʿs, 143-186. BRILL.
Weis, Friederike
-
Von zwei Seiten betrachtbar: Indische Alben für Antoine-Louis Polier, in: Ordnen – Vergleichen – Erzählen: Materialität, kennerschaftliche Praxis und Wissensorganisation in Klebebänden des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, hrsg. v. Elisabeth Oy-Marra und Annkatrin Kaul-Trivolis, Merzhausen, 125-153
Friederike Weis
-
Eighteenth-Century Indian Muraqqaʿs. BRILL.
Weis, Friederike
