Exhibition of the week The Indian Portrait 1560-1860

National Portrait Gallery, London WC2 (020-7306 0055; www.npg.org.uk). Until 20 June


"Ranging from an elaborately detailed image of a Mughal emperor at the moment of sexual penetration to an unsparing study of an opium addict in the last emaciated days of his existence, the Indian portrait can take some inventive if not downright peculiar forms," said Rachel Campbell- Johnston in The Times. This show at the National Portrait Gallery draws together a "temptingly eclectic selection" of 60 works, which between them give "a brief summary" of portrait painting as it emerged in the Mughal courts in the second half of the 16th century - and evolved in the following 300 years.


The paintings' sources were as varied as Iranian manuscripts and the Western prints brought to court by Jesuit missionaries - whose meaning was not always fully understood, said Campbell-Johnston. In one work, for example, "a stout Dutch trader is endowed with wings for no other reason than that he appeared other-worldly to the man who painted him".


Initially, portraits tended to depict rulers and their symbolic attributes, but by the mid-18th century Indian portraiture had come under the influence of European naturalism - partly because "as imperial traders expanded their territories, washed- up British portraitists turned up on the sub-continent". It was the British painters' fascination with Indian domestic affairs that led the native practitioners to follow their example and



record the small details of Indian life - "to watch a powerful king playing affectionately with his sons, to peep into a courtyard of jewelled courtesans or see the shuffling line of peasants signing up to be soldiers". This is "a treasure-trove of a show, and one that repays careful looking", said Jan Dalley in the FT. It's worth remembering, for example, that Indian audiences would have interpreted some of these paintings in a very different way to Western ones. Take the painting of the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah making love, with "a compliant anonymous beauty lying beneath him, his sword, jewels and hookah carefully placed on the floor beside the bed". To Indian eyes, this is not an erotic scene: "it is a display of power and virility, his prowess in bed an echo of his prowess in war (the sword) and in business (the jewels). It's an Indian version of the European 'swagger portrait', in which a

compliant anonymous beauty lying beneath him, his sword, jewels and hookah carefully placed on the floor beside the bed". To Indian eyes, this is not an erotic scene: "it is a display of power and virility, his prowess in bed an echo of his prowess in war (the sword) and in business (the jewels). It's an Indian version of the European 'swagger portrait', in which a Western gentleman showed off his finery."
No doubt about it, this exhibition is "a delight", said Philip Hensher in The Mail on Sunday. The "virtuosity of the painters is astounding". In many cases, you need "a magnifying glass to appreciate the refinement and expressive wit of much of their work": it is only then that you can fully enjoy and comprehend some of the "most beautiful and humane portraits in existence".