visions of mughal india - The Ashmolean Museum

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIAThe Collection of Howard Hodgkin2 February–22 April 2012

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIACONTENTSIntroduction 3Schools of Mughal Painting 6MughalDeccaniPahariRajasthaniThe Hodgkin collection 11Howard Hodgkin 13Dr Andrew Topsfield 14Supporters 15Catalogue, Tickets & Events 16Eastern Art at the Ashmolean 17The Ashmolean Museum 20Contact Details 21www.ashmolean.org

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIAINTRODUCTIONDr Andrew Topsfield“These pictures have been chosen because I thoughtthey were beautiful, because they touched my emotions,and not for any scholarly purposes. It is the collection ofan artist. I hope you enjoy looking at it.”Howard Hodgkin Detail of Elephantand riderMughal, c.1640The artist Howard Hodgkin has been a devoted collector of Indianpaintings since his schooldays in the late 1940s. Progressivelyrefined over the years, his collection has grown slowly but steadily,and has long been considered one of the finest of its kind in theworld. It is above all a personal collection, formed by an artist’seye.The Hodgkin collection comprises most of the main Indian courtstyles that flourished during the Mughal period (c.1560–1858):the refined naturalistic works of the imperial Mughal court; thepoetic and subtly coloured paintings of the Deccani Sultanates;the boldly drawn and vibrantly coloured Rajput styles of thePunjab Hills and Rajasthan. They are exhibited here within thesebroad regional groupings. Yet there are also recurrent themesin Hodgkin’s collecting which run throughout the exhibition:his keen interest in drawings as well as fully coloured works; hispredilection for unusually large Indian pictures; and, not least,his love of elephant subjects, from the serene imperial elephantportraits by Mughal artists, to the powerful action studies by thecourt painters of Kota in Rajasthan.3www.ashmolean.org

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIAA previous, selective exhibition of 42 paintings from the Hodgkincollection was held at the Ashmolean in 1992, following earliershowings in Washington and Zurich. But in the last two decadesmany more important acquisitions have been made, includingin recent years the outstanding Bijapur portrait of Sultan Ali AdilShah. This exhibition of 115 works, held in Howard Hodgkin’s80 th year, represents his collection at a late stage of its evolutionand virtually in its entirety. This review of a lifetime’s collecting isa valuable opportunity for us – and for the collector himself – toreappraise and take stock, to discern themes and patterns. Detail of Sultan AliAdil Shah hunting atigerBijapur, Deccan, c.16604www.ashmolean.org

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIA India in the Mughal and British periods (1500–1900)5www.ashmolean.org

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIAMughal PaintingThe Mughal empire in India was established in 1526 by theCentral Asian prince and vivid diarist Babur (r.1526–30). It wasconsolidated from the 1560s by his dynamic grandson Akbar(r.1556–1605). Under Akbar’s keen eye, the Mughal style ofpainting was also formed at this time, from an inspired synthesisof Persian miniature technique with vigorous local Indian stylesand a growing element of European naturalistic influence. Manyof Hodgkin’s Mughal pictures belong to the Akbar period, beforethe energetic qualities brought by his enlisted Indian artists weregradually refined out of the imperial style. Detail of Rama’sforest dwelling inPanchavatiIllustration to theRamayanaSub-imperial Mughal,c.1605There are paintings too in the hybrid sub-imperial style, byMughal-trained artists of lesser rank for noble patrons, some ofthem Hindu Rajput princes, serving at the Mughal court around1600 and after. With its assertive geometry, unrestrained patternmakingand heightened emotional sensitivity, Rama’s forestdwelling in Panchavati was probably made for a Raput patronfrom Datia in Central India.Hodgkin came to post-Akbari Mughal painting, with its morehighly refined naturalism, a little later in his collecting career.His Mughal works of the Jahangir (1605–27) and Shah Jahan(1627–1658) periods include court scenes, portraits, and superbgroups of imperial elephant portraits. Some of the later works,such as two evocative scenes of noblemen at leisure on terracesor the majestic portrait of the elephant Ganesh Gaj, were probablyexecuted away from the imperial centre of Delhi and Agra, andfar south in the permanent Mughal military settlements in theDeccan.6www.ashmolean.org

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIA Detail of SultanMuhammad Adil Shahand Ikhlas Khan ridingan elephantBijapur, c.1645Painting of the Deccani SultanatesIn the Deccani Sultanates of Bijapur and Golconda, which wouldremain independent until 1686–87, the new Mughal conventionsof royal portraiture had already been assimilated and transformedby local court artists. Outstanding Bijapur works in Hodgkin’scollection include Muhammad Adil Shah and Ikhlas Khan ridingan elephant. The composition derives closely from a Mughalmodel, yet the treatment is wholly Deccani in its subtle richnessof colour and the restricted modelling of the darkly massive formsof the royal elephant, while the Sultan wears an opulent, glowinggold robe. Gold too, in varying shades, permeates an extravagantflowering vase design, a superb flight of Deccani decorativefantasy. Yet in contrast, a natural history illustration of bambooplants, an earlier and less typical work from Bijapur which Hodgkinacquired in the 1960s and prizes highly, is stark in its conceptualsimplicity and boldly energetic brushwork.Painting of the Pahari SchoolMughal art was still more influential at the semi-independentRajput courts in the Punjab Hills, Rajasthan and Central India,many of whose princes were required to attend the imperial courtand to serve in its armies. The interaction of Mughal pictorialconventions with indigenous painting styles led to the formationof numerous, distinctive local Rajput schools in the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries. Each was also subject to wide variationsof style at different periods. Harihara SadashivaMandi, Punjab Hills,c.1710–20Among the earliest paintings attributable to a Pahari (Hill) schoolis the superb Mandi scene of a wedding procession passingthrough a bazaar. This rare and exceptionally detailed view of midseventeenthcentury street life is executed with all the technicalfacility of Mughal art. Yet two generations later at Mandi, a robustindigenous idiom had reasserted itself, as seen in the powerfulstippled image of the eight-armed deity Harihara Sadashiva.7www.ashmolean.org

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIAOther Pahari works of the late seventeenth century fall betweenthese stylistic extremes. A pair of vibrantly coloured portraits ofBasohli rulers adapt the Mughal portrait convention of a rulersmoking a hookah and make of it something altogether different.The red borders and other strong primary and secondary colours,together with boldly assertive carpet and textile patterns, createan atmosphere more intense than serene. Detail of Marriageprocession in a bazaarMandi, Punjab Hills,c.1640–50Hodgkin has collected a few paintings of Hindu gods andmythological themes, such as Brahma or the Tantric goddessBhadrakali, but their iconography or symbolic meaning have notinterested him very much, only their effect as works of art. Aquasi-mythological genre that has attracted him particularly, in itsearly Pahari forms at Basohli and other courts, is that of Ragamala(‘Garland of Ragas’). These series of illustrations depicting theragas, the musical modes of North India, and their ragini ‘wives’were conceived as representing the essential spirit or ethosof each mode, as originally expounded in musicological texts.In the Hill schools, Ragamala images tend to be small, squarishand compactly composed, with strong red borders and yellowor other coloured grounds. Their textually prescribed dramatispersonae are usually two or more figures of men, women, animals,snakes, gods or yogis, engaged in a wide diversity of decorousbut emotionally charged psychological or physical encounters.Sometimes these tautly conceived engagements of figures aredevotional or heroic in feeling; more often they tend to the erotic. Kedara Raga:Ascetics making musicArki, Punjab Hills, late-17th centuryThe resurgence of imperial painting under Muhammad Shah(r.1719–48) brought a further wave of refining Mughal influencesto the Hills in the second quarter of the eighteenth century,disseminated especially by wandering painters of the Gulerschool. The unfinished yet dramatic painting of the monkeyAngada’s leap to Ravana’s golden fortress, from the Siege of Lankaseries of c.1725, reveals Hodgkin’s interest in uncompleted works8www.ashmolean.org

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIAfor their disclosure of the artist’s first ideas andworkings. It is also – like so many of his Indianpictures — a work of unusually large size.The most gifted Pahari artist of the mideighteenthcentury was Nainsukh of Guler.For much of his career he worked for theminor nobleman Balwant Singh of Jasrota,and the unusually close understanding thathe developed with his patron is evident in hismany intimate and psychologically revealingstudies of the Raja’s daily life. One of the twoworks in the collection certainly attributableto Nainsukh is the elongated hunting scene,in which Balwant Singh and other nobles onhorseback surround a huge and defiant tiger.Other slightly later works, either by Nainsukhor his close followers, are the Disrobing ofDraupadi, a restrained and elegant rendering ofa famous scene of thwarted sexual humiliationfrom the Mahabharata, set against a boldlystriped durree; and a sensitive fragmentarystudy of some Pahari travellers singing by thewayside. Balwant Singh hunts a tigerGuler, Punjab Hills, c.1750. Attributed to Nainsukh9www.ashmolean.org

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIA Detail of Elephant’sheadKota, Rajasthan,c.1700–10Rajasthani PaintingFurther creative reinterpretations of Mughal models are foundamong the Rajasthani works which comprise more than a thirdof the Hodgkin collection. Among the many local court styles ofRajasthan, Hodgkin has valued above all the animated elephantdrawings and paintings from Kota. From the mid-seventeenthcentury onward, Kota elephant and hunting pictures wereunrivalled in their energy of line and sense of mass in motion. Nearlya century later, the Kota artists’ jungle landscapes, turbulent lakesand swaying bamboo clumps still seethe with life, as in MadhoSingh hunting boar. Such compositions derive in part from distantMughal models, and were also reworked repeatedly in large-scalepalace mural compositions by artists at the neighbouring courts ofBundi and Kota. Yet in the hands of a master painter they could stillbe recreated afresh. This ever renewed creative impulse appearsfinally at Kota in the mid-nineteenth century under Ram Singh II,as in the exuberant scene of his wedding at Udaipur in 1851.Elsewhere in Rajasthan, Hodgkin has favoured works from aselect group of major and minor courts. There are strong courtand hunting scenes from Udaipur, capital of the ancient dynastyof Mewar. Dating from c.1700–50, they were painted for theinnovative patron Amar Singh II and his grandson Jagat Singh II. Detail from MaharaoRam Singh’s marriageprocession at UdaipurKota, Rajasthan, c.1851At the minor courts – lesser kingdoms in the Rajput hierarchy,or else small baronial estates (thikanas) – the weight of dynastichistory and court protocol was less oppressive, and paintersworking there could improvise or experiment more freely. AtKishangarh, the prevalent poetic cult of Krishna and his consortRadha led to expressive stylisations of figures and faces with acharacteristic elongated eye, as in the fine study of a singing-girlwith a green tanpura.10www.ashmolean.org

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIARawat Gokul Das at the Singh Sagar is a late masterpiece by themaster Bakhta, who trained at the major court of Udaipur, butfound artistic liberation after moving to work for the Rawats of theDeogarh thikana in the late 1760s. Less inhibited still than Bakhtawas his son Chokha, an ebullient and eclectic artist who workedboth at Udaipur and Deogarh in the first quarter of the nineteenthcentury. Chokha’s large scale Court beauty, painted for BhimSingh of Mewar, transforms a standard languorous heroine figure,typically found in palace mural paintings, into a supercharged,nubile bombshell with a soulful Kishangarh eye. Detail of A courtbeautyUdaipur, Rajasthan,c.1805–10, attributed toChokhaThe Hodgkin CollectionWhile the Hodgkin collection is larger and more diverse than ever,it continues to reveal a coherent vision, rooted in his sensibility asan artist, in his long engagement with the country of India, andin particular themes or technical concerns that have intrigued orresonated with him. It is worth mentioning again at least threeleading features of the collection, already alluded to: the matterof size, the interest in drawings, and the prevalence of elephants.Hodgkin has often acquired unusually big pictures. Most Indianpaintings on paper were made as manuscript illustrations, or elseto be held in the hand and passed round in intimate, appreciativegatherings of nobles or ladies. There are of course many worksof those kinds in the collection. But many others are of greaterthan usual size, some even on the scale of palace wall-paintings,and their expansiveness undoubtedly lends much to their effect.Largest and most imposing of all are the two giant Kota drawingsof elephants pushing cannons drawn by bullocks, both of thempowerful, repetitive compositions. (How often, incidentally,Hodgkin’s favoured themes seem to come represented in pairs ortrios of pictures).11www.ashmolean.org

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIAHodgkin has also collected drawings as keenly as finishedpaintings, and often also partly coloured works on a plainpaper ground. His interest in drawings is not surprising, sincedraughtsmanship — the mastery of outline and contour aboveall — is an essential test of quality in an Indian picture. Indianartists seldom lacked a sure sense of colour, yet only a few atany period could draw at a level above the conventional, or takea received pictorial idea and revivify it as the Kota masters did.Elephant studies, Hodgkin’s great predilection, in fact revealthis aptitude most clearly. Even when a painter’s human figuresremain stiffly conventional — as they often do — it was unheardof for him to produce a lifeless or listless elephant. From earliesttimes, Indian painters and sculptors have known how to convey awarmly sympathetic sense of this royal animal’s massive volumes,its grace in motion, its noble intelligence and playful charm. Detail of ElephantsfightingKota, Rajasthan,c.1655–60Collecting Indian paintings has been almost as deep a passionin Hodgkin’s life as painting, and this exhibition is in a sense asummation of his collecting. We hope it will inspire, inform anddelight.12www.ashmolean.org

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIAHOwARD HODGkIN, CH, CBE Howard Hodgkin© STEN-M. ROSENLUNDHoward Hodgkin, CH, CBE, was born in 1932. His firstretrospective exhibition Forty-five Paintings, 1949–1975 openedat the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford in 1976. Since then theMetropolitan Museum, New York, the Museum of Modern Art,Fort Worth, the Kunstverein, Dusseldorf and the Hayward Gallery,London have exhibited his work. In 2006 a major retrospectiveopened at Tate Britain in London. It was also seen at the IrishMuseum of Modern Art, Dublin and the Reina Sofia, Madrid.Recent work has been shown at the Yale Center for British Art andthe Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Time and Place 2001–2010opened at Modern Art Oxford in 2010 and toured to the De PontMuseum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg, and San Diego Museumof Art, California. Last year he showed new paintings in Oslo(Peder Lund Gallery) and in New York (Gagosian Gallery).Howard Hodgkin studied at Camberwell School of Art and BathAcademy of Art from 1949–1954. He was Artist in Residenceat Brasenose College, Oxford 1976–1977 and was made anHonorary Fellow in 1988. Oxford University gave him an HonoraryDoctorate in 2000. He represented Britain at the 1984 VeniceBiennale, was awarded the Turner Prize in 1985, and knighted in1992.He began to collect Indian paintings and drawings while still atschool and made his first visit to India in 1964. “I think my mainreason for going back to India”, he told David Sylvester in 1984,“is because it is somewhere else”. “Painting in a studio is naturallya lonely occupation”, he wrote in 1991. “Collecting, on the otherhand, brings with it an almost automatic series of introductions,social contacts, with dealers, scholars and occasionally with fellowcollectors.”13www.ashmolean.org

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIADR ANDREw TOPSFIELDDr Andrew Topsfield is Keeper of Eastern Art at the AshmoleanMuseum. Educated at the Universities of Oxford and London, heworked as an Assistant Keeper in the Indian Department of theVictoria & Albert Museum from 1978–1984. He then joined theAshmolean as Assistant Keeper with responsibility for the Indian,Himalayan and Southeast Asian collections.He has written many books, catalogues and articles on Indianpainting and related subjects, particularly on court painting atUdaipur in Rajasthan during the Mughal and British periods(c.1560-1940). His books include: The City Palace Museum,Udaipur: Paintings of Mewar court life (Ahmedabad, 1990; repr.2009); (with Milo Cleveland Beach), Indian paintings and drawingsfrom the collection of Howard Hodgkin (New York, 1991; London,1992; repr. 1994); Court Painting at Udaipur (Zurich, 2002);Paintings from Mughal India (Oxford, 2008); Visions of MughalIndia: The Collection of Howard Hodgkin (Oxford, 2012).14www.ashmolean.org

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIASUPPORTERSCHK Charities Ltd.VISIONS OF MUGHAL INDIA: THE COLLECTION OF HOWARD HODGKINhas been supported by CHK Charities Ltd.The Exhibition Events Programme has been supported bythe Nehru CentreThe Nehru Centre is the cultural wing of the High Commissionof India and is administered by the Indian Council for CulturalRelations, an autonomous organisation affiliated to the Ministry ofExternal Affairs, Government of India. It strives to foster a culturaldialogue between India and the United Kingdom, serving as awindow to the composite culture of India.In 1989–90, the centenary year of the birth of Jawaharlal Nehru,the need was voiced for a centre in London which would helpaddress the cultural aspirations of the Indian community andfacilitate a sustained dialogue between Indian and British cultures.The Nehru Centre commenced its work in July 1992, with aprogramme to mark the centenary of the election of DadabhaiNaoroji to the House of Commons - the first entry of an Asianto that body. This year marks the twentieth anniversary of theestablishment of The Nehru Centre. During the last 19 years theCentre has been home to a variety of cultural activities. This hasinvolved eminent Indian artists visiting the United Kingdom andIndian artists based in Britain.For more information please visit www.nehrucentre.org.uk15www.ashmolean.org

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIACATALOGUEWith an introduction and essay by Dr Andrew Topsfield,the exhibition catalogue provides a superbly illustrated andcomprehensive view of the Hodgkin collection, including manyrecently acquired works. Selected writings by Howard Hodgkinprovide reflections on Indian art and his life as a collector.The catalogue can be purchased in the Ashmolean Shop or onlineat: www.ashmolean.org/shop. Paperback Price: £25 (£20 withan exhibition ticket - offer available through the Ashmolean Shoponly).TICkETS£6/£4 concessions (including Gift Aid) available at the Museumor online: www.ashmolean.org/exhibitions/ticketsEVENTSThe Ashmolean Museum will host a programme of events inassociation with VISIONS OF MUGHAL INDIA, featuring lectures,talks and tours, and family friendly activities. For more informationvisit www.ashmolean.org/events16www.ashmolean.org

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIAEASTERN ARTAT THE ASHMOLEANThe Jameel Study CentreVisitors are welcome to The Jameel Centre to view theAshmolean’s study collections of Eastern Art. The Eastern Artcollections comprise over 30,000 objects spanning 5,000 years.Highlights include early Chinese greenware ceramics; modernChinese painting; Japanese export porcelain and art of the Meijiperiod; Islamic ceramics and embroideries; and Indian, Tibetanand Southeast Asian sculptures and paintings. Temporarydisplays from the reserve collections are shown in a six-monthlyrotation outside the Study Centre in Gallery 29.The Jameel Centre is open to anyone by appointment:Tue–Fri, 10am–1pm & 2pm–5pm.T+44 (0)1865 288 107 | eastudycentre@ashmus.ox.ac.ukhttp://jameelcentre.ashmolean.orgEastern Art OnlineThe Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art provides onlineaccess to the Ashmolean Museum’s Eastern Art departmentcollections. As part of the University of Oxford, the collectionshold particular value for teaching and research, but they alsoappeal to visitors who may not be as familiar with the material. Withcontextual information and high-quality photography, the EasternArt Online website opens the collections and enables everyoneto find what they are interested in - whether for research, artisticinspiration or general curiosity.The VISIONS OF MUGHAL INDIA exhibition will be available to viewonline from 2 February 2012.17www.ashmolean.org

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIATHE ASHMOLEAN’SINDIA GALLERIES The BuddhaGandhara, 2nd–3rdcentury ADIndia to AD 600 (Gallery 12)Explore the early development of Indian art from the artefacts ofthe Indus Valley to the Hindu and Buddhist sculpture of northIndia and Gandhara. Religion has played a central role in Indianlife and culture for at least four thousand years. Between 500 BCand AD 500 the major historic religions of Hinduism, Buddhismand Jainism were developing to maturity. Most surviving works ofart from that period were inspired by their teachings. This gallerybegins by showing the development of early Indian art, fromthe Indus Valley Civilization to the first flowering of Hindu andBuddhist sculpture in the Mathura region of North India. It alsosurveys the Buddhist art of the Gandhara region (north Pakistanand east Afghanistan). Strong Greco-Roman cultural influences inthe north-west gave rise to a naturalistic style of sculpture whichadapted classical models in depictions of the Buddha and his life. Ceiling bossSouthern Rajasthan, 8–9thcentury ADIndia from AD 600 (Gallery 32)Explore Hindu, Buddhist and Jain art from India, the Himalayasand Southeast Asia .‘The divinity draws near willingly if images arebeautiful’ (Vishnudharmottara Purana, AD 500–600). Many of theHindu, Buddhist or Jain images in this gallery were once installedin temple or household shrines as objects of daily devotion andmeditation. They convey the serenity, compassion and supremepower or insight of deities and enlightened beings. Images like18www.ashmolean.org

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIA Seated PadmapaniPunjba, North India,6th–8th centurythese remain in use in worship today throughout India, as well asin the Himalayan region and Southeast Asia, whose cultures weretransformed by the spread of Buddhism and Hinduism. FromAD 600 the form of the temple was developing, within India andbeyond, into a symbolic microcosm of the universe. Towers andouter walls teem with carved imagery of gods, men, animals andplants. Distinctive regional styles of sculpture soon developedthroughout the subcontinent. As in earlier times, professionalsculptors often worked for patrons of different faiths, so thatHindu, Buddhist or Jain images may share a similar regional style. Mosque tileMultan, Punjab, 1750–1800Mughal India 1500–1900 (Gallery 33)Discover the paintings and decorative arts of the most powerfuland lasting of the Islamic dynasties in India - that of the Mughalemperors. Founded by Babur in 1526, the empire was consolidatedby his grandson Akbar (1556–1605). Ruling from Agra, Delhi, andLahore, Akbar and his successors became lavish and innovativepatrons of art and architecture. For over a century, the Mughalcourt arts achieved a brilliant synthesis of Persian, Indian, andEuropean styles. In Europe, the ‘Great Mogul’ became a bywordfor absolute power and courtly magnificence. Mughal artisticinfluence also spread to the provincial courts of the Deccanisultans and the Hindu Rajputs. By the 1760s, the empire was indecline and the British East India Company had begun to dominatethe subcontinent. The arts of this later, ‘Company’ period showincreasingly strong European features.19www.ashmolean.org

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIAASHMOLEAN MUSEUMFounded in 1683, the Ashmolean is Britain’s oldest public museumand possibly the oldest museum in the world. In 2009 it reopenedfollowing a £61 million redevelopment. The new Ashmoleanbuilding, designed by award-winning architect Rick Mather,has received universal acclaim and numerous awards. It houses39 new galleries, including the new special exhibition galleries,an Education Centre, state-of-the-art conservation studios, andOxford’s first roof-top restaurant. The Ashmolean completeda second phase of redevleopment in 2011 with the opening ofsix new galleries of Ancient Egypt and Nubia. It is now the mostvisited museum in the country outside London. Admission is free.ASHMOLEAN EXHIBITIONS Detail of Portrait ofan Unknown ManAnonymous artist.Work on loan to theenglish prize exhibition© Museo de la RealAcademia de BellasArtes de San Fernando,MadridThe Ashmolean holds an exciting programme of major exhibitionsand small displays throughout the year in its special exhibitioncentre and in galleries around the Museum. The 2012 programmeincludes the major exhibition THE ENGLISH PRIZE: THE CAPTUREOF THE WESTMORLAND (17 May–27 Aug), the story of an armedmerchant ship destined for England laden with artistic treasures,which was captured by the French. Among the special displaysare YAKUSHA-E - Japanese Kabuki prints from the 19 th -centuryto contemporary works (until 4 March); GUERCINO: A PASSIONFOR DRAWING - THE COLLECTIONS OF SIR DENIS MAHON AND THEASHMOLEAN MUSEUM (11 Feb–15 Apr); and ART AT THE EDGE -newly commissioned bronze sculptures celebrating Olympic sport(19 Mar–20 May). For more information visit: www.ashmolean.org/exhibitions20www.ashmolean.org

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIACONTACT DETAILSSusie Gault | Press & Publicity Managersusie.gault@ashmus.ox.ac.uk | +44 (0)1865 288 298Claire Parris | Ashmolean Press Officeclaire.parris@ashmus.ox.ac.uk | +44 (0)1865 278 178Ashmolean MuseumUniversity of OxfordBeaumont StreetOxford OX1 2PHwww.ashmolean.orgSwitchboard: +44 (0)1865 278 000Open:Tues–Sun & Bank Holiday Mondays10am–6pmClosed:MondaysAdmission:Free21www.ashmolean.org