Best in show

“As well as being one of our leading artists, Howard Hodgkin has also been a very keen collector of Indian paintings and we held a selective exhibition of them some 20 years ago.

Two decades on, with the artist now into his 80th year and continuing to collect, despite sporadically saying he’s going to give up, we thought it was time to put on another show of almost the entire collection.

It contains most types of painting that flourished in the Mughal period and Hodgkin has a particular eye for artwork of great quality.

He also has a particular love for elephant pictures, many of which are from the Mughal school depicting prize specimens from the imperial stable or drawings from the court of Kota in Rajasthan, which became famous for the vivacity and dynamic quality of its art showing elephants in motion.

Indeed, this 17th-century picture is just as much about the elephant itself as it is about the sultan (the figure driving the animal) and his minister who is riding behind, waving a cloth to keep the flies off his very important companion.

One’s focus is particularly drawn towards the elephant’s statuesque posture and silhouette against the intense blue background; the animal is festooned with ceremonial trappings, garlands, chains and bells and even its tusks are decorated with little pendants.

Once elephants had commenced the procession through crowded streets, they could not stop on a sixpence. The bells told people to get out of the way – like they do on a tram – but much of the decoration was for show and general grandeur.

We know who the sultan and his minister were and even the names of the artists, which are inscribed on the left-hand side of the picture, but we don’t know the name of the elephant. In Moghul painting it was common to have that given as well.

There were a lot of very well-known elephants at that time. They were a supremely regal animal and formidable in battle, where one was thought to be worth some 500 horses when it came to intimidating an enemy.

I’ve known this picture a long time. It has been in Hodgkin’s collection for about 50 years and I first got to know it in the mid-1970s when I worked at the V&A and had the privilege of looking after it and displaying it while it was on loan.

It’s an absolute thrill to be reunited with it once again.”

Andrew Topsfield is the keeper of Eastern art at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Oxford

Visions of Mughal India: The Collection of Howard Hodgkin is at the Ashmolean until 22 April