Indian Paintings

India's painting tradition is one of the oldest in the world. It began with art scratched and daubed onto the walls of rock shelters tens of thousands of years ago. The single most important site is Bhimbetka, located south of Bhopal in the Vindhyan ranges of Madhya Pradesh and declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003.

Key facts about Bhimbetka:

• It has more than 500 rock shelters with paintings, the oldest estimated at about 30,000 years old. They survive because they lie deep inside the caves.
• The shelters show continuous human occupation from roughly 100,000 BC to 1000 AD. Later paintings were often painted directly over older ones.
• The paintings span the Upper Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Chalcolithic, early historic and medieval periods, though most belong to the Mesolithic age.

What the paintings show:

• Everyday life of pre-historic people, drawn as simple stick-like human figures.
• Animals such as elephant, bison, deer, peacock and snake.
• Hunting and war scenes, with men carrying bows, arrows, spears, shields and swords.
• Social life: children playing, women making food, community dancing, music, animal fights and honey collection.
• Simple geometric designs and symbols.

The colours (red ochre, purple, brown, white, yellow and green) were all drawn from natural sources. For example, haematite ore was ground to make the red. (Pre-historic rock paintings are sometimes called petroglyphs when they are carved rather than painted.)

A mural is a painting executed on a wall or other solid structure. Indian murals can be dated roughly between the 10th century BC and the 10th century AD. They are found mostly in natural caves or rock-cut chambers. Their themes are usually religious (Buddhist, Jain and Hindu). Their defining feature is sheer size: they cannot fit on paper and must be painted onto the walls and ceilings of large structures.

The most celebrated sites are:

• Ajanta caves (Maharashtra): among the oldest surviving murals in the subcontinent. A set of 29 caves carved in a horse-shoe shape out of volcanic rock. Murals in caves 9 and 10 belong to the Sunga period. Most of the rest are Gupta. They use both true fresco (painting on wet plaster) and the tempera technique (pigments). Themes are the Jataka tales (stories of the Buddha's earlier lives) and the life of the Buddha. Each female figure has a unique hairstyle, and even animals are shown with emotion. The famous Padmapani and Vajrapani bodhisattvas appear in Cave 1, and the "Dying Princess" in Cave 16.
• Ellora caves (Maharashtra): murals in five caves, mostly in the Kailasa temple, painted in two phases. Early panels show Vishnu and Lakshmi borne by Garuda. Later ones, in a Gujarati style, show processions of Shaiva holy men. The paintings cover all three religions.
• Bagh caves (Madhya Pradesh): an extension of the Ajanta school, but with more tightly modelled, more earthly figures. Cave 4, the "Rang Mahal", carries Buddhist and Jataka murals.
• Sittanavasal (Tamil Nadu): Jain cave murals close in style to Ajanta and Bagh, on walls, ceiling and pillars. The central scene is a lotus pond (Samavasarana), ascribed to the Pallava or Pandya period.
• Armamalai (Tamil Nadu): natural caves turned into a Jain temple in the 8th century, depicting the Astathik Palakas (guardians of the eight directions).
• Ravan Chhaya (Odisha): a rock shelter shaped like a half-open umbrella, famous for a royal procession painting of the 7th century.
• Lepakshi (Andhra Pradesh): murals on the Veerabhadra temple of the Vijayanagara period (16th century), based on the Ramayana and Mahabharata, marked by a complete absence of the colour blue.
• Jogimara (Chhattisgarh): early paintings (about 1000–300 BC) of dancing couples with a distinct red outline, in the Surguja district.
• Badami (Karnataka): among the earliest surviving Hindu murals (6th–7th century), including a four-armed Brahma on his swan, painted under the Chalukyas.

The word miniature comes from the Latin minium, meaning red-lead paint (not, as often assumed, from "minimum"). Miniatures are small, minutely detailed paintings, made for books and albums on perishable materials such as paper, palm leaf and cloth. By convention a miniature should be no larger than about 25 square inches, with the subject painted at no more than one-sixth of life size. Human figures are usually shown in side profile, with bulging eyes, a pointed nose and a slim waist.

Early miniatures (8th–12th centuries) developed as a reaction to the giant wall murals:

• Pala School (c. 750–1150 AD, eastern India): manuscript paintings on palm leaf, patronised by Buddhist (Vajrayana) patrons, with sinuous lines and lonely single figures. Noted painters: Dhimman and Vitapala.
• Apabhramsa School (11th–15th centuries, Gujarat and Mewar): mostly Jain themes, later Vaishnava (Gita Govinda). Figures have fish-shaped bulging eyes and angular faces. The famous works are the Kalpasutra and Kalakacharya Katha.

After the coming of the Sultanate, three great medieval schools emerged:

• Mughal School (16th–18th centuries): drew on Persian naturalism but shifted the focus from gods to glorifying the ruler, with hunting scenes, battles and court life in brilliant colour. It introduced foreshortening. Akbar founded the studio (Tasvir Khana) and produced the Tutinama and Hamzanama, both large illustrated narrative manuscripts. Jahangir (its zenith) loved naturalistic flora and fauna, with painter Ustad Mansoor. Under Jahangir the atelier also changed direction: it moved away from Akbar-style illustrated manuscripts towards individual portraits and single naturalistic studies, collected in albums (muraqqas). Shah Jahan added gold and silver, producing a stiffer, more artificial style. Aurangzeb withdrew patronage, scattering artists to the regional courts.
• Rajasthani / Rajput Schools: colourful, devotional and Hindu in spirit (lotus, peacock, swan). Sub-schools include Mewar (painter Sahibdin), Kishangarh (the famous Bani Thani by Nihal Chand, with a sharp profile and lustrous eyes), Bundi-Kota / Hadoti (detailed vegetation, Krishna bhakti), Amber-Jaipur (Dhundar) and Marwar (Jodhpur, Bikaner, Jaisalmer).
• Pahari Schools: from the sub-Himalayan hill states between Jammu and Almora, grouped as the Basholi (early, bold primary colours, big lotus-petal eyes) and the Guler-Kangra (delicate, lyrical, peaking under Raja Sansar Chand, with Gita Govinda and Krishna themes). Great painters: Nainsukh and Manaku.

A distinct South Indian tradition used heavy gold and focused on the divine:

• Tanjore (Thanjavur) paintings: patronised by the Marathas (18th century), painted on glass and board, set with gold leaf and gemstones, usually showing Krishna. The style flourished under Sarfoji Maharaj.
• Mysore paintings: Hindu gods and goddesses, using the gesso paste technique (zinc oxide and gum) for a sheen, with muted colours.

Two more groups are worth noting. Ragamala paintings ("garland of ragas") personify musical ragas (the six principal ones are Bhairava, Deepak, Sri, Malkaush, Megha and Hindola) and appear in Pahari, Rajput, Deccan and Mughal versions. In the colonial era the Company School blended Indian training with European watercolour and perspective. Raja Ravi Varma of Kerala, the "Raphael of the East", fused South Indian themes with Western technique. Later the Bengal School (Abanindranath Tagore's Bharat Mata, Nandalal Bose) revived a Swadeshi spirit.

Folk and tribal painting is a living tradition, still practised in villages, and a rich source of exam questions because each style is tied to a particular state, base material and set of motifs. The major forms:

• Madhubani (Mithila) painting, Bihar. Done traditionally by village women around Madhubani town, drawn from Hindu deities (Krishna, Rama, Durga, Lakshmi, Shiva). It is two-dimensional with no shading, has a double-line border, bold colours and exaggerated faces. Gaps are filled with flowers, animals and fish (a symbol of fertility). It holds GI status. Painter Sita Devi is well known.
• Pattachitra, Odisha. Patta (cloth) + chitra (picture). Painted on treated cloth with natural colours, outlined freehand in red or yellow, then lacquered for a glossy finish. Themes come from the Jagannath and Vaishnava cults. The village of Raghurajpur is its home. On palm leaf it is called talapattachitra.
• Patua art, West Bengal. Thousand-year-old scroll (pat) paintings. Travelling patuas sing the stories they paint, today often on social and political themes.
• Kalighat painting, West Bengal. Grew up around the Kalighat temple in 19th-century Calcutta, painted in watercolour on mill paper. It was the first Indian style to express subaltern and satirical sentiments.
• Paitkar painting, Jharkhand. Tribal scroll painting linked to the goddess Ma Mansa. Its theme is "what happens to human life after death". It is on the verge of extinction.
• Kalamkari, Andhra Pradesh. From kalam (pen), using a pointed bamboo pen on cotton fabric with vegetable dyes. Centres are Srikalahasti (freehand, Hindu mythology) and Machilipatnam (block designs).
• Warli painting, Maharashtra–Gujarat border. By the Warli people, resembling Bhimbetka rock art. A ritual style around a central chauk motif, using only triangle, circle and square and a single white pigment (rice paste) on a red-ochre mud wall.
• Thangka painting, Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh, Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh. Buddhist scrolls on cotton canvas, traditionally by monks, with each colour carrying meaning (red for passion, white for serenity, black for anger), framed in silk brocade.
• Manjusha (Angika) painting, Bhagalpur, Bihar. Painted on jute-and-paper boxes. Because snake motifs are always present, it is also called snake painting.
• Phad painting, Rajasthan. A long religious scroll (phad), 15 to 30 feet long, of deities Pabuji and Devnarayan, with large eyes and processions.
• Cheriyal scroll painting, Telangana. A form of Nakashi art, narrated like a comic by the Balladeer community. It holds GI status (2007).
• Pithora painting, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. Tribal ritual wall painting, often of horses, for peace and prosperity.
• Saura painting, Odisha. By the Saura tribe, similar to Warli. Ritual murals (italons/ikons) are dedicated to Idital, in white on a red or yellow ground.

Exam setters often mix a folk painting with other living traditions and ask which pairs are correct. Two non-painting traditions appear repeatedly alongside Madhubani:

• Gatka: a traditional martial art of Punjab, associated with the Sikhs. It uses wooden sticks that imitate swords. It is not a dance or a painting, and it does not belong to Kerala.
• Singhey Khababs Sindhu Darshan: a festival held on the banks of the Indus river in Ladakh (then part of Jammu and Kashmir). It celebrates the Indus, not any southern river.

Remember the correct anchors: Gatka belongs to Punjab, Madhubani to Bihar, and Sindhu Darshan to the Indus in Ladakh.

From the late 19th century, Indian painting moved off temple walls and out of court ateliers onto the gallery canvas. Raja Ravi Varma opened the modern era by painting Indian gods and epics in Western oil and perspective. The Bengal School of Abanindranath Tagore then reacted against this Westernisation with a Swadeshi, wash-technique revival. After Independence, the Progressive Artists' Group, founded in Bombay in 1947 by painters such as F. N. Souza, S. H. Raza and M. F. Husain, broke with both and embraced international modernism. Exam questions often list modern names and ask which of them are artists, so the leading figures must be known as individuals.

The names most often tested:

• Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941): born in Budapest to a Sikh father and Hungarian mother, trained in Paris. She fused European modernism with Indian subjects, painting rural and village women in works such as Three Girls and the South Indian trilogy. She is counted among the nine "National Treasure" artists whose works cannot be exported from India.
• N. S. Bendre (1910–1992): a versatile modern painter from Indore who experimented with pointillism and cubist idioms. He shaped the influential Baroda school as a teacher at the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda.
• Bikash Bhattacharjee (1940–2006): a Calcutta painter known for haunting realist and surrealist oil portraits of middle-class Bengali life, including his famous Doll series. He received the Padma Shri.
• Subodh Gupta (born 1964): a leading contemporary artist from Bihar, internationally known for sculptures and installations built from everyday objects, especially stainless steel kitchen utensils such as tiffin boxes and milk pails.

Other canonical moderns include M. F. Husain (horses, often called India's Picasso), S. H. Raza (the Bindu motif), F. N. Souza, Jamini Roy (folk-inspired flat figures drawing on Kalighat pat) and Tyeb Mehta. The common thread of the modern movement is the individual artist's name attached to a personal style, unlike the anonymous, community-based folk traditions.