1889–1978
The Ustad Who Carried Miniature Painting into Pakistan
Haji Muhammad Sharif occupies a remarkable place in the history of miniature painting in South Asia. Born in 1889 in Patiala, he belonged to a hereditary family of court painters whose artistic lineage extended through several generations. His grandfather, Ustad Allah Ditta, and his father, Basharat Ullah, were both associated with the Patiala court and practised the traditional arts of miniature and court painting.
Sharif therefore did not encounter miniature painting as an academic discipline. He inherited it as a living tradition — one transmitted through family, apprenticeship, observation, repetition and years of disciplined practice.
FROM PATIALA COURT TO THE WORLD OF ART
Sharif’s early life was closely connected with the princely court of Patiala. Accounts of his career describe him entering the service of the Maharaja as a young man, eventually becoming a court painter. His training included instruction from artists associated with the Patiala tradition, including Lala Shaoo Ram, as well as influences from Muhammad Hussain Khan of Delhi and other painters connected with his father’s circle.
The Patiala environment was particularly significant. As Mughal political power declined, hereditary painters moved into the courts of regional rulers, carrying with them techniques, subjects and visual conventions developed during the Mughal period. Patiala consequently became one of the important centres in which these traditions survived and evolved.
Sharif became one of the important heirs to that tradition.
His work was not limited to a single historical subject. The Patiala painters worked across a wide range of themes, and the family tradition included religious, literary and courtly subjects. Art historian Nadeem Omar Tarar notes that Sharif’s grandfather and father produced works depicting subjects ranging from scenes from the Mahabharata and Hindu mythology to Janamsakhis, Radha-Krishna themes, Gita Govinda, Nayak-Nayika and Ragamala imagery.
THE MOVE TO LAHORE
The most consequential chapter of Sharif’s life began when he was invited to teach at the Mayo School of Arts in Lahore, the institution that later became the National College of Arts.
He joined the school in the mid-1940s, with sources generally placing the beginning of his teaching career there in 1945. His arrival was historically important because miniature painting was no longer being transmitted solely through hereditary workshops or royal courts. For the first time, a master of the old court tradition was brought into an institutional educational environment.
This made Sharif a bridge between two very different worlds:
the hereditary workshop and the modern art school.
He brought to Lahore something that could not easily be acquired from books — decades of practical knowledge accumulated through an uninterrupted tradition of painting.
At Mayo School, he developed and taught a curriculum based on traditional miniature painting. Several sources describe him as the first major traditional miniature master attached to an academic institution in Pakistan and credit him with establishing the foundations of formal miniature instruction that later developed at the National College of Arts.
THE TRADITION OF THE USTAD
Sharif’s importance cannot be understood simply through the paintings he produced. His greater historical contribution may have been teaching.
Traditional miniature painting depended upon an intensely demanding relationship between ustad and shagird — master and apprentice.
The student learned not merely how to draw. He learned how to prepare materials, handle the brush, construct a composition, apply colour, create fine lines, understand shading and patiently build an image through repeated stages of work.
Sharif brought this traditional method into the classroom.
His students included artists who would become important figures in the later history of Pakistani art. Among them was Bashir Ahmad, who subsequently became one of the most influential teachers of miniature painting at NCA. Wikipedia’s biography of Bashir Ahmad records his traditional apprenticeship under Haji Muhammad Sharif and Sheikh Shujaullah.
Another significant connection was Jamil Naqsh, who left formal study and pursued a period of apprenticeship with Sharif. Art historian Nadeem Omar Tarar records that Naqsh even signed some early works as Shagird Haji Sharif — literally identifying himself through his relationship with the master.
Through such relationships, Sharif’s influence travelled far beyond his own studio.
A TRADITION IN TRANSITION
Sharif’s position in Pakistani art history is particularly fascinating because he worked at a moment when the very meaning of “modern art” was changing.
The newly emerging Pakistani art world increasingly valued modernism, individual expression and European-influenced approaches. Traditional miniature painting, by contrast, was often treated as an old craft associated with reproduction and court culture.
Sharif represented the opposite position: continuity rather than rupture.
Art historian Nadeem Omar Tarar has described Sharif as a hereditary court painter whose reputation rested partly on his perceived authenticity as a bearer of an older Indian manuscript tradition. His presence at Mayo School became part of a larger debate about what constituted tradition, modernity and national art in postcolonial Pakistan.
Interestingly, Sharif’s lack of conventional academic qualifications was also used against him institutionally. Research on the early decades of NCA notes that despite his reputation and extraordinary practical experience, he was not given the same professional status as academically trained lecturers.
This contradiction tells us something important about his historical position.
He possessed knowledge that the institution desperately needed, yet that knowledge came from a system the modern institution itself regarded as old-fashioned.
HIS PAINTINGS
Sharif’s work is often associated with the reproduction and continuation of historical miniature conventions, but describing him simply as a copyist would be too simplistic.
Art historians have pointed out that his work drew upon several miniature traditions and that his compositions and subjects changed over the course of his career. After Partition, his practice increasingly focused on works on paper, while his visual language continued to carry the discipline and refinement of traditional manuscript painting.
One particularly important work is his 1959 portrait of Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
The painting is significant because Sharif used an essentially traditional miniature vocabulary to depict a modern political figure. Contemporary miniature artist Imran Qureshi has described the work as deeply inspirational and as an important early example of miniature painting being used to address a contemporary subject.
This is perhaps where Sharif’s importance becomes clearest.
He was not simply preserving an old visual language.
He was demonstrating that the language could still speak to the present.
RECOGNITION
Sharif’s contribution eventually received formal recognition from the state.
He was awarded the President’s Pride of Performance in 1967 for his services to the field of art.
He also held exhibitions during his lifetime, including a significant solo exhibition at Alhamra in Lahore in 1960, associated with the Pakistan Arts Council. Accounts of the exhibition record recognition from President Ayub Khan, including a lifetime monthly grant.
His reputation extended beyond Pakistan. Sources connected with his family describe his work as having received international recognition through the India Society in Britain.
In 1991, more than a decade after his death, Pakistan Post commemorated him with a postage stamp as part of its Painters of Pakistan series.
That stamp is itself an interesting historical footnote for POP: the name Painters of Pakistan was already being used by Pakistan Post in commemorating major Pakistani painters.
THE LEGACY
Haji Muhammad Sharif died in Lahore in 1978. By then, the world in which he had learned miniature painting had almost completely disappeared.
The princely courts were gone.
The old hereditary workshops had declined.
The political and cultural landscape of South Asia had been transformed.
Yet the knowledge Sharif carried did not disappear with him.
It moved into the classroom.
It moved into the studios of his students.
And eventually it became part of the foundation from which the remarkable revival of Pakistani miniature painting emerged in the late twentieth century.
The lineage is particularly important when considering the international reputation of contemporary Pakistani miniature artists. Researchers have traced the training of later generations — including Bashir Ahmad, and through him artists such as Shahzia Sikander and Imran Qureshi — back to the tradition represented by Sharif.
This makes Haji Muhammad Sharif much more than an accomplished miniature painter.
He was a custodian of a tradition at the precise moment when that tradition was in danger of disappearing.
WHY HAJI MUHAMMAD SHARIF MATTERS TODAY
The importance of Haji Muhammad Sharif lies in the unusual position he occupied between history and modernity.
He belonged to the world of the royal court, yet taught in a modern art institution.
He inherited miniature painting through his family, yet helped place it within formal art education.
He worked within an ancient visual language, yet used it to depict subjects belonging to his own time.
And perhaps most importantly, he passed knowledge from one generation to another at a moment when the traditional system of transmission was beginning to disappear.
The contemporary international recognition of Pakistani miniature painting cannot be separated from this history.
Before miniature became a major contemporary art language associated with Pakistani artists around the world, there were masters like Haji Muhammad Sharif, patiently preserving its discipline, technique and memory.
He did not merely preserve miniature painting. He gave it a future.
