‘Fine Lines’ draws on the Collection to examine the meticulous brushwork in figurative paintings across a broad geography and range of pictorial styles. The exhibition features eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Indian miniatures alongside works by contemporary artists from India, Pakistan, Iran, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand.

Emerging more than two millennia ago in Han dynasty China (202 BCE – 220 CE) and enjoying enormous popularity and patronage during the Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279) periods, the delicate technique known as gongbi (meticulous brush) was prized for its precision in depicting the natural world and its aptness for conveying narrative.

In addition to influencing the Buddhist art of Heian-era Japan (794–1185) and Tibetan tangka painting, gongbi flowed across central Asia to Persia, where it contributed to the flowering of thirteenth-century miniature painting. This, in turn, was fostered by the Mughal Empire in sixteenth-century India, where the technique was used to document historical events and illustrate legendary and poetic tales, gradually developing into a range of local styles. When British colonial rule destroyed the Mughal patronage system, miniature painting took on new directions as ‘Company Paintings’ produced for foreign collectors. The technique was reinvigorated by the avant-garde nationalist Bengal School of the early twentieth century, contemporaneous with modernisations elsewhere, from nihonga in Japan to Mongol zurag in Mongolia.

In a contemporary context, this rich cultural inheritance, which spans the breadth of the Asian landmass, continues to provide a fertile source of inspiration for artists exploring figuration and narrative. ‘Fine Lines’ includes subversive re-interpretations of gongbi by Hong Kong artist Wilson Shieh, and an important group of works by artists who trained at the National College of Art in Lahore in the 1990s, where years of study in Persian, Mughal and provincial miniature styles have been applied to create contemporary relevance and context for the discipline.