ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the contemporaneous reception of the Mughal miniature within and outside Mughal court culture in nineteenth-century Delhi (1827-1880), the city that served as the home of the last three Mughal emperors as well as the key diplomatic outpost of British governance in India. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the politics of the image-gift formed the undercurrent for most Anglo-Mughal interactions. The chapter provides a context for understanding the role of painted miniatures within courtly and popular practices in nineteenth-century Anglo-Mughal Delhi. Finally, the chapter addresses the concept of a demise of quality and workmanship, inherent in perceptions of the absorption of miniature painting into the marketplace. Within Delhi's flourishing curio market in the late nineteenth century, the distinction between Mughal and Mughalerie, for all practical purposes, had sufficiently blurred. Delhi emerged as a prominent centre for the production as well as the distribution of ivory objects.
