How does The Passing of Shah Jahan elucidate its Themes and composition?
Earlier renderings of the subject in  literature had focused on Mughal wars of succession, and depicted Shah Jahan as an aging king whose illness and weakness had been the cause of instability and war. Locked in his room in the Red Fort by his son Aurangzeb, Shah Jahan was seen as a 'poor palace builder' whose only achievement was his monument to love: the Taj Mahal. Many British colonial authorities had gone further and sought to differentiate between the current regime and that of the Mughals, in order to demonstrate the lasting vitality of the British colonial Empire. Tagore's painting fits this description due to the widely available Colonial literature and attitude of the day.E.B Havell's interest in monuments and sculpture never found a place with Tagore. What had attracted him the most was the intimacy of relationship found in Indian art which was further exemplified by the selective realism in Mughal miniatures. Realism not in terms of surfaces, but rather of expressions. The three major types of painting that were to have inspired Tagore were British watercolor painting, Mughal miniatures, and Japanese painting. The incorporation of these styles is evident in The Passing of Shah Jahan. Tagore moved from a normative realism used as a tool for objective expression, into a freer naturalism that would draw attention to specific areas through realism.Tagore's works typically have no anonymity in form, and themes of individualism are almost always present; this has met with some criticism amongst art critiques. In addition, Tagore sought to incorporate Bhava, or feeling, into his artwork. This idea of 'feeling' was especially important to the 'Passing of Shah Jahan'; the painting had attempted to explain the romantic ideas of loss, focusing on Shah Jahan's imprisonment at the Red Fort and the loss of his wife.  Prior to Tagore, this idea was never visualized, though many Mughal and Western artists had drawn many portraits and figures of Shah Jahan and other Mughal characters. However, neither group had attempted to illustrate the emotions of these characters nor did they contain narrative elements. Tagore's attempt to depict the pathos of Shah Jahan imprisoned in the Red Fort and his last look at the Taj Mahal was a revolutionary element in Indian painting, especially at a time when the study of Indian history gained attention by British colonialists and native Indian people.
Red Fort Shah Jahan Aurangzeb Taj Mahal