The V&A Museum brought the painting from Mrs Frances Clarke, the widow of Major General John Clarke, who served as the Commissioner of Oudh from 1858 to 1862, who acquired it from the Mughal Imperial Workshop.
The Akbarnama was the official chronicle of the Mughal Emperor Akbar’s reign, written by his court historian Abul Fazl, and was produced as an illustrated manuscript with several miniature paintings. It sheds light upon Akbar’s life, court, conquests, and administration, and its illustrations are some of the most important works of Mughal painting collections.
One of such works is the above painting, a folio from the Akbarnama, depicting the rejoicings at Fatehpur Sikri after the birth of Akbar’s second son, Prince Murad Mirza, in Fatehpur Sikri in 1570. The artwork, painted in opaque watercolour and gold on paper, depicts musicians, attendants, and nobles of the court showering offerings around the royal women and the infant prince, turning this dynastic event into a formal court image. The painting is attributed to the imperial painter Bhura, well known for his prowess in painting. It is widely described as part of the first illustrated copy made in Akbar’s imperial workshop in the 1590s.
The artist Bhura is known primarily for painting legendary battle scenes in the Mughal chronicles. He is recorded as a painter who often worked in collaboration with senior masters such as Basawan and Miskin, often executing the painting while another artist designed the composition, a typical scene of the Imperial Mughal kitabkhana. Especially in this folio, a Persian inscription records the collaboration of two master artists, crediting Bhura for the painting and Basawan for the faces. The inscription, written in red ink in the margin, is a key piece of evidence for understanding how names were recorded in the imperial workshop.
Overall, the painting not only depicts a royal historical scene from the Mughal period, but it also gives insights into how Mughal paintings were created by a collaboration of skills and mastery under one royal roof.
Painted by the court artist Bhura, depicts the celebrations at the royal city of Fatehpur Sikri, after the birth of Akbar's second son, Murad, in 1570. This is a scene of a royal birth, a city throwing a party, artists working together to capture the joy of it. Akbar commissioned this whole massive chronicle to show his subjects how blessed and stable his reign was. Scholars such as Milo Cleveland Beach and John Seyller have argued that Akbarnama illustrations function simultaneously as historical documentation and as instruments of political legitimation, visually reinforcing the notion of a divinely sanctioned, fertile, and stable dynasty at a moment when Akbar was actively consolidating Mughal authority across a fractious and religiously diverse empire.
