A Gathering of Princes

The darbar scene with four sons and two grandsons of Shah Jahan is attributed to Bhavanidas, a distinguished painter of the later eighteenth century who was associated with the Mughal atelier. Between 1700 and 1715, his Mughal-period commissions are believed to have been executed under the patronage of Bahadur Shah. However, during Aurangzeb's reign, the gradual decline of imperial patronage and the curtailment of the Mughal atelier compelled several artists, including Bhavanidas, to seek patronage in the Rajput principalities. In 1719, he entered the court of Raja Raj Singh of Kishangarh, where he began experimenting with diverse genres, thereby laying the groundwork for what would become the distinctive Kishangarh school of painting. Trained in the Mughal miniature tradition, Bhavanidas specialized in generational portraits depicting successive generations within the imperial court. His Mughal-period works are distinguished by a recurring repertoire of courtly motifs, including low tables adorned with porcelain flower vases, richly patterned floral carpets, and canopies emblazoned with paired birds of paradise revolving around a solar emblem. The work exemplifies Bhavanidas’s characteristic Mughal style, with the inscription amal-i Bhavanidas (work of Bhavanidas) on the central porcelain vase explicitly establishing the artist’s authorship. The composition presents the six Mughal princes in a formal court, arranged clockwise from the upper right as Shah Shuja, Aurangzeb, Bahadur Shah, Azam Shah, Murad Baksh, and Dara Shukoh. The depiction of Aurangzeb’s sons, Bahadur Shah and Azam Shah, as fifteen- to sixteen-year-old princes provides a significant chronological marker for dating the painting. also confirms the period of its composition. Hence, at the Rajput court, his artistic vocabulary underwent an evolution with his painting increasingly characterised by flatter compositions, elongated forms and a more pronounced linearity that contributed to the emerging Kishangarh style.