Farrukh Beg


Farrukh Beg was a Persian born Mughal painter who served in the court of Mirza Muhammad Hakim before working directly for Mughal Emperor Akbar. He was trained in the Persian miniature style and remained relatively close to it all his life. He was greatly admired by the Mughal emperor, Jahangir, and worked in four royal courts altogether.

Biography

He was born in Iran and belonged to the Kalmyk people and received training in Khurasan. He started working in Kabul under Muhammad Hakim, half brother of emperor Akbar. And after the death of Hakim, he moved to Delhi in December 1585. He worked on many paintings for Mughal royalty between 1586 and 1590, when he took part in the Kandhahar campaign of Akbar, but after this seems to have been absent from the Mughal court until around 1605. He may also have been the painter known as Farrukh Hussein, who is recorded in Kabul, where he painted a portrait of Hakim in 1584. A Farrukh Hussein is also mentioned as the foremost painter in Bijapur during these "missing years", and various works in the Bijapur version of Deccan painting have been attributed to him. But these attributions, and the whole question, remain unsettled. After he reappeared at the Mughal court he worked for Jahangir, who in 1609 gave him 2,000 rupees, and described him as "unrivalled in his age".
Some of his best works for the Mughal emperor Jahangir are in the Gulshan Album, now in the Golestan Library in Tehran.
He is one of a number of artists who took the traditions of the Persian miniature to form that of the Mughal miniature, like Abd al-Samad. He used large plants, vivid colours, and drapery in his work.

Works