Part of Private Collection in England while it was on tour of an exhibition held at 1016 Madison Avenue, New York 10075.
Banwari Khurd was a painter under the reign of the Mughal emperor Akbar. He was also known by the name of Banwari the younger. He worked throughout late 16th and early 17tg century. His suffix Khurd suggested that he was younger while there was another painter named Banwari Kalan who was older than him.
He was specialized in the Mughal miniature paintings. He mostly did the colouring and portraiture part while other artists like La'l, Basawan, Amal did other parts. There are many of his artwork which are part of manuscripts such as Baburnama, Razmnama along with Zafarnama.
Zafarnama (Yazdi Biography) which was written by Sharaf al-Din Ali Yazdi nearly 20 years after the death of Timur. It was commissioned by Ibrahim Sultan who was grandson of Timur. While Akbar made copy of illustrated Zafarnama in 1590s (1595 - 1600) which was a detailed manuscript about Timur as Akbar was direct descendant of Timur. And this artwork is part of Akbar's illustrated Zafarnama.
This painting is part of depiction of one of the Timur's expeditions. Timur is seen pursuing Toqtamish Khan in 1391. His huge army crossed Eurasian Steppes during the Tokhtamysh Timur War. It was an 18 week battle which ended in Timur's victory. One can see Timur and his army on stallions on a hilly region. The colour scheme is in perfect blend with one another, opaque watercolour along with ink and gold are used on paper to create this artwork and Banwari signature in red can also be seen at the bottom of the painting.
The artwork captures a violent chase where a fallen horse anchors the chaos. The painting serves as a royal propaganda to glorify Timur to legitimize his descendant Akbar. I find this visually amazing, but uneasy art that quietly celebrates conquest.
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By: Ashwinder Khehra (Ash)
Here's my reading of this folio, drawing on the confirmed identification: "Timur's army pursues Toqtamish Khan in 1391," a folio from Akbar's Zafarnama (1595-1600), ascribed to Banwari Khurd, done in opaque watercolour, ink and gold on paper.
The composition captures a moment of pursuit rather than a static battle line — cavalry surging across steppe terrain, Timur's forces in the chase after Tokhtamysh's retreating army during their long 1391 campaign across the Eurasian steppe. Pursuit scenes like this typically use diagonal, cascading compositions — riders and horses arranged in tumbling ranks down a hillside or across open ground — to convey momentum and disorder, in contrast to the more static, frontal arrangements used for siege or court scenes.
Beyond the historical event, the painting functions as dynastic propaganda. Akbar commissioned this Zafarnama specifically because Timur was his direct ancestor — so every triumphant scene, including this one, isn't just illustrating Yazdi's 15th-century biography, it's visually asserting Akbar's own legitimacy and martial lineage. The chaos and speed of a pursuit scene (versus a calm court audience) also lets the artist show off technical virtuosity — foreshortened horses, overlapping riders, a sense of terrain and distance — which Mughal ateliers used to demonstrate mastery of Persianate painting conventions while pushing them toward the more naturalistic, energetic style Akbar's workshop favored.
Banwari Khurd's role — coloring and portraiture, working alongside specialists in outline or composition — reflects how these manuscripts were collective productions, almost like an assembly line of specialized hands producing a unified imperial narrative. The red signature at the bottom is a quiet but significant detail: individual artists claiming credit within what was fundamentally a state-sponsored, ideological project.
So the "message" I'd draw is layered: on the surface, a celebration of a specific military victory; underneath, a visual argument for Akbar's inherited right to rule, built through the deliberate, luxurious craft of gold, ink, and pigment that only an imperial treasury could commission.
