The Art of Asia
 

 

 


INDIAN COURT PAINTING


(16th-19th century)


 

FOUR CENTURIES OF INDIAN PAINTINQ


 

The younger Nainsukh became established in the 1740s at Jasrota, where, for his patron, Raja Balwant Singh, he painted and drew extraordinarily refined and psychologically poignant pictures that demonstrate a close observation of nature. Many are studies of the maharaja from life, some are fantastic allegorical pictures of him, and others treat individual Hindu subjects (see below).
Coloristically his miniatures show some similarities with works done at the Mughal court of Muhammad Shah, particularly the prominence of white and the sparing use of hot colors. The facial types Nainsukh employed in representing deities also resemble ones in the imperial style.
 

Raja Balwant Singh of Jasrota Does Homage to Krishna and Radha
1750
 

Krishna Steals the Butter
1765
 

 The plunder of Delhi by Nader Shah in 1739 left the Mughal court impoverished and consigned it to political and cultural decline.The Rajastham courts, which had responded to successive waves of Mughal influence over the last century and a half, now evolved on their own. Mughal subject matter was not entirely abandoned, but, with varying degrees of completeness, artists subtly reintroduced a more Rajput pictorial sensibility. In many cases the color became bolder and less literal. The picture plane grew shallower, and linear, decorative qualities became more pronounced. The expression of these tendencies varied not only from court to court but also within an atelier, from artist to artist. A wide range of quite distinctive styles was the result (see below).
 

Melancholic Courtesan
1750
 

Krishna and the Gopis Take Shelter from the Rain
1760
 

Lady Yearning for her Lover
1780
 

Singer and Sarangi Player
1800
 

Head of Krishna
1800
 

The developments in the Punjab Hills were more conservative. At the courts of Basohli, Chamba. Guler, |ammu. and Kangra a great flowering of painting took place that was very largely a continuation of the work of Man-aku and Nainsukh by their children. The brothers had molded their children's artistic personalities, schooling them in an idealized and romantic naturalism whose deep space, cool palette, observed nature, and idealized faces hark back to Mughal models. Curiously, the most salient characteristic of the style— the pervasive use of a naturalistic landscape to mirror and serve as background for both mythic and everyday events — had received only cursory treatment from the elder generation. Unlike most of Nainsukh's paintings but like those of his elder brother, these late pictures are predominantly illustrations of manuscripts with religious or poetic themes. They reach their pinnacle with a group of lyrical manuscripts produced for the Kangra court of Sansar Chand (r. 1775-1823) (see below).

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Mughal painting traditions enjoyed a kind of resurgence under the patronage of the Muslim potentates who established independent kingdoms in North India and the Deccan. Some of the best paintings depict grandees seated on terraces with vast panoramas of buildings and gardens stretching into the distance behind them. Although such images derive from earlier models, this time the landscape, rather than the sitter, commands the viewer's eye.
At the same time, the British officers and grandees who had incorporated a large part of the former Mughal empire into Britain's also employed artists who had been trained in Mughal court traditions. Their depictions of flora, fauna, and everyday Indian life represent a marvelous confluence of literal documentation and pictorial imagination. Inspired design and bold patterning raise the best of these works, made as album illustrations, into the realm of art. Unlike their Jahangiri ancestors, they are silhouetted against the white of the page rather than set within a fully realized space.
 

Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana at the Hermitage of Bharadvaja
1780
 

Radha Pining in the Wilderness
1780
 

Krishna Woos Radha
1780
 

The Village Beauty
1780