Museum · Washington, D.C., United States
Freer Gallery of Art
With the adjoining Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art. Its Mughal painting includes Bichitr's portrait of Jahangir preferring a Sufi to kings.
See first
- Bichitr's Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaikh to Kings
- Nine folios of the Shah Jahan Album
- Other South Asian painting in the collection
- The Freer|Sackler Library, the largest Asian art research library in the United States
The Freer and the Sackler, side by side and run by one staff, together form the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. The collections cover East, South and South-East Asia, the Islamic world, the ancient Near East and Egypt. The museum is open every day of the year except Christmas, and its library is the largest for Asian art in the United States.
For India, start with one painting. Jahangir Preferring a Sufi Shaikh to Kings was painted by Bichitr for the Mughal court around 1615–18 and bought by the Freer in 1942. It is from the group of leaves known as the St Petersburg Album. The emperor sits on an hourglass throne and gives his attention to a Sufi shaikh while kings wait their turn. In the lower left corner is a small self-portrait of the painter. It is a political picture and a vain one, and a very fine one.
The Freer also holds nine folios of the Shah Jahan Album; the other forty-one are at the Met in New York.
