MASTERPIECES OF PERSIAN, TURKISH, AND INDIAN DRAWINGS FROM HARVARD'S WELCH COLLECTION TO PREMIERE AT ASIAN ART MUSEUM OF SAN FRANCISCO AND TRAVEL TO CAMBRIDGE
From Mind, Heart, and Hand to Feature Works from One of the Finest Collections in the World
CAMBRIDGE, MA-March 29, 2004-An exhibition featuring 76 Indian, Persian, and Turkish drawings from the collection of Harvard's Arthur M. Sackler Museum will premiere at The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco on September 17 and remain on view until November 28, 2004. The exhibition will then be presented at Harvard's Fogg Art Museum from March 19 through June 12, 2005. From Mind, Heart, and Hand: Persian, Turkish, and Indian Drawings from the Stuart Cary Welch Collection is one of a few major exhibitions ever to focus exclusively upon drawings from South Asia and the Middle East, a rich but understudied field of both Indian and Islamic art. The exhibition features works distinguished by their beauty and historical significance, and furthers the Harvard University Art Museums' commitment to providing scholars and visitors with opportunities to study and enjoy exceptional works of art.
From Mind, Heart, and Hand also celebrates the life and legacy of Stuart Cary Welch, a groundbreaking scholar and distinguished collector of Islamic and Indian art. A former curator of Islamic and Later Indian Art at the Harvard University Art Museums, Welch taught Islamic and Indian art at Harvard and developed a collection considered to be one of the finest of its kind in private hands. Welch has made several major gifts of works of art from these regions to the Harvard University Art Museums' collection in recent years, securing its position as one of the primary repositories of Islamic and Indian drawings and paintings in the world.
Featuring drawings from the 15th - 18th centuries and including a small selection from the early colonial era in India, From Mind, Heart and Hand will showcase the role that drawings played within the artistic traditions of Persia (modern-day Iran), Turkey, and India. From Mind, Heart, and Hand will highlight how drawings and sketches served as templates to be copied and were often themselves valuable cultural objects. Contrary to some European traditions, the concept that a master drawing was a complete work of art appears to have existed throughout the Middle East and India. The exhibition will also explore the artistic connections between Persian art and the development of drawing styles in Turkey and India, three regions drawn together by trade, conquest, and tradition. A wide range of drawing applications will be represented, from spontaneous sketches to master drawings that were highly prized works of art in their own right.
In 1999, Stuart Cary Welch gave a group of 306 works of art from India, Iran, and Turkey to the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard. His gift was part of the long tradition of Harvard alumni and scholars expanding the collections of the Art Museums through their generosity. Comprising masterpieces studied by connoisseurs and scholars, as well as works seen by only a few of Welch's acquaintances before coming to Harvard, Welch's gift constitutes one of the Art Museums' most significant acquisitions.
"Stuart Cary Welch's legacy to the Art Museums has created an exceptional resource for the teaching, research, and study of the artistic traditions of the Middle East and India," said Thomas Lentz, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard University Art Museums, who studied with Welch at Harvard. "Welch's gift, like that of Grenville L. Winthrop's, ensures that future generations of students and scholars-and I am one of them-benefit from the discerning eye and extensive knowledge of one of the great collectors in the country."
Stuart Cary Welch
Stuart Cary Welch was a pioneer in the study of the arts of the Indian and Islamic worlds and his importance as a collector and connoisseur was augmented by his scholarship. Captivated by works of art from these regions during childhood museum visits, Welch began collecting at a young age, acquiring most of the works in his collection between 1945 and 1965. When he began in the 1940s, drawings from these regions were little known and not popular among most established collectors. Welch was able to acquire drawings of extremely high quality and rarity before these works became sought after.
Welch was a groundbreaking teacher in fine arts at Harvard for 25 years. He was part of the vanguard of Islamic art scholars at Harvard, one of the first universities in the United States to establish a department for this subject. Welch was known for his singular passion for the art he studied and his extreme generosity with students. He often lent drawings from his own collection to students so that they could be contemplated for extended periods. Welch has been teacher and mentor to many distinguished museum community leaders and scholars, including Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art, and Michael Brand, director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Welch held various curatorial positions at the Fogg Art Museum and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum from 1956 to 1995, when he retired as Curator of Islamic and Later Indian art. Concurrent with his work at Harvard, he headed the department of Islamic art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1979 to 1987. He is now curator emeritus, Islamic and Later Indian art, at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum. As a curator, his scholarship has served as the foundation for many important exhibitions and accompanying publications, including The Art of Mughal India (Asia Society, 1963), the first exhibition devoted to Mughal art, and India: Art and Culture, 1300-1900 (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985). Welch did both his undergraduate and graduate studies in Fine Art at Harvard in the 1950s.
From Mind, Heart, and Hand
From Mind, Heart, and Hand was organized by Kim Masteller, Assistant Curator of Islamic and Later Indian Art at the Sackler Museum, along with Stuart Cary Welch. The exhibition consists of 76 works from the Welch Collection that were chosen by Welch because of their historical significance, beauty, and their role in the broader collection. The works in the exhibition will be organized by culture and then chronologically within each cultural group. Visitors will be able to study and compare these separate but related traditions.
Indian Works
The exhibition will feature Indian works from both the Mughal Empire (1526-1857) and regional Hindu kingdoms, which simultaneously ruled different parts of the modern-day countries of India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Patrons of the artists working in these related but distinct traditions were both Hindu and Muslim, and several examples of drawings in westernized style by Indian artists for British patrons will be included.
The Mughal tradition was concerned with documentation and accuracy, and subjects were drawn from historical and political events. Among works featured in the exhibition, the meticulously detailed Mughal-style Battle of Samugarh (North India, 1658) depicts the decisive battle between Shah Jahan's heir Dara Shukoh and his younger brother Prince Aurangzeb, which changed the course of Indian history. Drawn by the well-known artist Payag, the work was likely commissioned by Aurangzeb upon his victory over his brother, and shows the politically charged scene where Dara Shukoh's army is fleeing the battlefield. The battle marked the end of Shah Jahan's reign, and with it, a decrease in artistic patronage.
The Rajput Empire fostered an active painting school that combined Mughal models with dynamic local styles. Among works in this section will be Fort of Gagraun (c. 1735), which documents the famous Gagraun stronghold of the Rajput kings from Kotah, Rajasthan. The fort is drawn with bold strokes of black ink and tinted with watercolors. Figures move in and out of the gates of the massive complex while two embattled elephants wrestle inside. All of these activities take place under the attentive gaze of a Kotah king, who peers down through a window upon the inner courtyard.
Persian Works
The Persian works in the exhibition represent a blending of indigenous artistic styles and influences from China and Europe. Figures in Persian drawings are inhabitants of an idealized world, and were generally created from memory and from earlier art. Persian draftsmen created highly refined imagery accentuated by their use of precise, calligraphic lines and harmonious compositions. During later periods, innovative masters also drew directly from life. Drawings from several dynasties, including the Timurid (1370-1506), Safavid (1501-1722), and Qajar (1794-1924), will be on view.
Among works in this section will be Seated Sufi (1595), attributed to Persia's great Safavid artist of the late 16th century Riza 'Abbasi. This work presents many of the classical trademarks of Persian drawings, where perfect forms are created through a few carefully controlled outlines rather than the subtle modeling preferred by neighboring Mughal patrons in India. The seated man wears the pointed hat of a Sufi mystic, a favorite subject of Riza during the 1590s.
Turkish Works
The drawings in From Mind, Heart, and Hand show that artistic traditions under the Ottoman Turkish empire (c.1299-1923) drew inspiration from neighboring Persia as well as the great empire to the east, China. One exceptional work, Dragon in Foliage (1565), presents a dynamic image of a dragon undulating through a swirl of spiraling foliage. The dragon image, descended from Chinese origins, eventually found its way into the paintings of Persian artists. Dragon in Foliage was painted by the Persian-born artist Mir Sayyid Muhammad al-Naqqash, who moved to Turkey due to political unrest among his patrons, the Safavid rulers of Iran. Though the dragon was drawn in Turkey, the direct impact of the Persian style is evident. This drawing in particular shows the movement of artists and styles throughout these neighboring dynasties that influenced artistic production.
Research
Craigen Bowen, Straus Conservator and Deputy Director of the Straus Center for Conservation at the Harvard University Art Museums, conducted visual and scientific analysis of the various papers and media used to create these drawings. She found that, in general, the materials and techniques of papermaking employed by the artists did not change greatly during the five centuries that the works in the exhibition span, but that the papers were manipulated in the artist's workshop to modify the appearance of the final picture. For example, diluted white wash could be added, or paper could be burnished to create a glossy finish. A decorative surface could also be achieved by flecking the paper with mineral pigments, such as gold or silver.
The most common media in the Welch drawings is black ink. Bowen discovered that while some of the drawings appear to have been created from single long lines of black ink applied with a brush, microscopic examination revealed that several overlapping lines of multi-colored ink (in some cases black, gray-black, brown-black, and blue-black) come together to create what appears to be a continuous line.
Catalogue
From Mind, Heart, and Hand: Indian, Persian and Turkish Drawings from the Cary Welch Collection by Stuart Cary Welch and Kimberly Masteller will be published by Yale University Press (New Haven and London) in association with the Harvard University Art Museums. The catalogue will feature essays by Mary McWilliams, Norma Jean Calderwood Curator of Islamic and Later Indian Art at the Sackler Museum, and Craigen Bowen, with entries written by many renowned scholars of Indian, Persian, and Turkish art. In several instances, multiple authors respond to the same work of art, offering a range of perspectives and historical approaches. The illustrated catalogue will be available for purchase in September 2004.
About the Harvard University Art Museums
The Harvard University Art Museums are one of the world's leading arts institutions, with the Arthur M. Sackler, Busch-Reisinger, and Fogg art museums, the Straus Center for Conservation, and the U.S. headquarters for the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, an excavation project in western Turkey.
The Harvard University Art Museums are distinguished by the range and depth of their collections, their groundbreaking exhibitions, and the original research of their staff. As an integral part of the Harvard community, the three art museums serve as a resource for all students, adding a special dimension to their areas of study. The public is welcome to experience the collections and exhibitions as well as to enjoy lectures, symposia, and other programs.
For more than a century, the Harvard University Art Museums have been the nation's premier training ground for museum professionals and scholars and are renowned for their role in the development of the discipline of art history in this country.
Location and Hours
The Fogg Art Museum and the Busch-Reisinger Museum are located at 32 Quincy Street in Cambridge. The Arthur M. Sackler Museum is located next door at 485 Broadway. Each Museum is a short walk from the Harvard Square MBTA station.
Hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., Sunday 1 - 5 p.m.; the Museums are closed on national holidays. Admission is $6.50; $5 for seniors; $5 for students; and free for those under 18 years of age. The Museums are free to everyone Saturday mornings, 10 a.m. - noon. The Harvard University Art Museums receive support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. More detailed information is available at 617-495-9400 or on the Internet at www.artmuseums.harvard.edu.
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For more information on this appointment or the Harvard University Art Museums, please contact:
Matthew Barone
Harvard University Art Museums
tel 617-495-2397; fax 617-496-9762
mbarone@fas.harvard.edu
or
Kim Gilbert/Jacquelyn Burke
Resnicow Schroeder Associates
tel 212-671-5157; fax 212-595-8354
kgilbert@resnicowschroeder.com
jburke@resnicowschroeder.com