Self-portrait of Mazhar Ali Khan - Mid 19th century.

"The brilliance and simplicity of the colours, the meticulous, almost hypnotic attention to details, the gem-like highlights, the way the pictures seem to glow, all these point unmistakably towards Mazhar Ali Khan’s training: no English artist would have thought of using the astonishing palette of colours that still stands out like a small aesthetic firework display; the tentative washes of a memsahib’s watercolour are a world away from this work. Yet the most fanatical Mughal attention to fine detail is fused with a scientific European rationalism to produce an architectural painting that both observes and feels the quality of a building. Thus while the picture of the tomb of Ghazi ud-Din in the Delhi College complex minutely reproduces the proportions and detail of the Mughal domes of the mosque behind it, the artist has also understood the ideal of lightness and delicacy that the architect was aiming at, and has produced an image of the building as fine and as fragile as a lace ruff: the tomb is so delicate and ethereal it could almost be blown away with a breath."

-The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple