Indian Paintings and Schools: Murals to Folk Art

The correct answer is B, Bihar. Madhubani painting, also called Mithila painting, belongs to the Mithila region of northern Bihar around the districts of Madhubani and Darbhanga. It was traditionally painted by women on the plastered walls and floors of the house for weddings and festivals, using natural dyes and a nib of bamboo wrapped in cloth, and it is now also done on paper and cloth. Its styles are Bharni, Katchni, Godna and Tantrik, and Sita Devi, Ganga Devi and Mahasundari Devi are its best known artists. It carries a Geographical Indication tag.

Option A, Uttar Pradesh, is not its home, though Mithila culture extends towards the Nepal border and not into the Doab. Option C, Kerala, is known for temple murals and Kathakali, not Madhubani. Option D, Tamil Nadu, is known for Tanjore painting with its gold foil, so it is the usual distractor in this question.

The correct answer is D, Kishangarh school. Bani Thani was painted by Nihal Chand in the eighteenth century at Kishangarh in Rajasthan, under Raja Savant Singh, who wrote devotional poetry under the name Nagari Das. The figure has an elongated face, a long neck, a sharply arched eyebrow and a curving eye, and this stylised female type became the mark of the school. The painting is often called the Mona Lisa of India, and Kishangarh work usually sets its lovers beside lotus filled lakes.

Option A, the Bundi school, is recognised by dense blue green vegetation, water and animal life, not by this female type. Option B, the Jaipur or Amber school, worked under strong Mughal influence on large portraits. Option C, the Kangra school, is a Pahari style from the hills, delicate and lyrical, famous for the Gita Govinda series, and geographically far from Rajasthan.

The correct answer is A, Ajanta. The Bodhisattva Padmapani, holding a blue lotus, is painted on the left wall of the antechamber of Cave 1 at Ajanta in Maharashtra, with the Bodhisattva Vajrapani facing him. The figure belongs to the Vakataka period of the fifth century, and its downcast eyes and relaxed body are held up as the finest example of Indian mural painting. Ajanta was painted in tempera on a ground of mud, cow dung and rice husk, and the caves stand above the Waghora river.

Option B, Badami in Karnataka, has Chalukyan royal portraits in Cave 3. Option C, Bagh in Madhya Pradesh, has Buddhist murals very close to Ajanta in style, which makes it the strongest distractor, but not this painting. Option D, Ellora, is chiefly a site of rock cut sculpture and architecture, with surviving painting mainly in the Kailasa temple.

The correct answer is C, Maharashtra. The Warli are a tribal community of the Palghar and Thane districts of northern Maharashtra, on the border of Gujarat. Their painting is made with a rice paste white on a wall coated with red ochre and cow dung, and it is built out of a few geometric units: the circle for the sun and moon, the triangle for mountains and trees, and the square for the sacred enclosure called the chauk. The commonest subject is the tarpa dance, a spiral of dancers around a musician. Jivya Soma Mashe was the artist who took Warli painting to the wider world.

Option A, Bihar, is the home of Madhubani. Option B, Kerala, is known for its temple murals. Option D, Assam, has manuscript painting of the Sattras, not Warli work.

The correct answer is C, Habib Tanvir. He was a playwright, director and actor of the modern Indian theatre, best known for Charandas Chor and for working with folk performers of Chhattisgarh in his company Naya Theatre. He belongs to drama, not to painting, so he is the odd one out.

Option A, Tyeb Mehta, was a painter of the Progressive Artists Group generation, known for his diagonal canvases and the Falling Figure and Mahishasura series. Option B, Jamini Roy, was a Bengal painter who left academic realism for the bold flat line of Kalighat painting and folk art of Bengal. Option D, Satish Gujral, was a painter, sculptor and muralist who also designed the Belgian Embassy building in New Delhi, so painting is one of his fields. Questions of this kind slip one name from theatre, music or sculpture into a list of painters.

The correct answer is B, Oil painting. Painting in oil on canvas was unknown in India before European artists and the colonial art schools brought it in during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Indian painters had worked in tempera and watercolour on walls, palm leaf, paper and cloth. Raja Ravi Varma of Kerala is the best known Indian master of the new medium, using oil and academic modelling for Hindu mythological subjects such as Shakuntala and Damayanti.

Option A, mural art, is ancient in India, from Ajanta and Bagh to the Kerala temple walls. Option D, miniatures, are equally Indian, from the Pala palm leaf manuscripts through the Mughal, Rajasthani and Pahari schools. Option C, perspective, is the tempting distractor: systematic linear perspective did come with European art, but the question asks what was introduced as a form of painting, and the oil medium is the standard answer to this stem.

The correct answer is C, Jahangir. Jahangir was a close observer of nature and asked his artists to record unusual birds, animals and flowers, so the single study replaced the crowded manuscript page. Ustad Mansur was his finest natural history painter and was given the title Nadir-ul-Asr, the wonder of the age; his Siberian crane and turkey cock are the standard examples. Abul Hasan, titled Nadir-uz-Zaman, and Bishandas, sent to Persia to paint the Shah, also served him.

Option A, Humayun, brought the Persian masters Mir Sayyid Ali and Abdus Samad and only began the school. Option B, Akbar, organised the atelier and commissioned the Hamzanama, Razmnama and Akbarnama, but his taste ran to narrative manuscripts, and Basawan and Daswanth were his men. Option D, Aurangzeb, withdrew patronage, which scattered the painters to the Rajput and Pahari courts.

The correct answer is B, Kangra. Kangra painting is the most lyrical of the Pahari styles and reached its height in the late eighteenth century under Raja Sansar Chand of Kangra in present day Himachal Pradesh. Its painters illustrated the Gita Govinda of Jayadeva, the Bihari Satsai and the Nala Damayanti, with soft cool colour, rounded faces and rain filled landscapes. The style grew out of the Guler work of Manaku and Nainsukh, sons of Pandit Seu.

Option A, Basohli, is the earliest Pahari school, bold and hot in colour, with beetle wing cases inlaid for emeralds, and its famous series is the Rasamanjari of Devidasa. Option C, Bundi, is a Rajasthani and not a Pahari school. Option D, Golconda, is a Deccan school of the Qutb Shahi court, far to the south and quite unrelated to the hill states.

The correct answer is C, Abanindranath Tagore. He painted Bharat Mata in 1905, during the Swadeshi movement against the partition of Bengal, showing a saffron clad four armed figure holding sheaves of paddy, a white cloth, a book and a rosary, the gifts of food, clothing, learning and faith. He was the founder of the Bengal School, worked in the Japanese derived wash technique and was encouraged by E. B. Havell of the Calcutta art school.

Option A, Raja Ravi Varma, worked in oil on academic lines and died in 1906; his subjects were Shakuntala, Damayanti and temple deities. Option B, Nandalal Bose, was Abanindranath's most influential pupil, made the Haripura Congress posters and decorated the pages of the Constitution of India, but not this work. Option D, Amrita Sher-Gil, belongs to the following generation and painted Indian village life in a modern European idiom.

The correct answer is B, Akbar. The Hamzanama, the romance of the adventures of Amir Hamza, was the first great project of Akbar's imperial atelier and took about fifteen years, its large folios painted on cloth by a team under Mir Sayyid Ali and Abdus Samad. The same reign produced the Razmnama, a Persian Mahabharata, the Tutinama, and the Akbarnama, and the workshop deliberately blended Persian composition with Indian colour and observation.

Option A, Babur, ruled for only four years in India, left the Baburnama as a memoir and had no painting workshop here. Option C, Shah Jahan, is associated with the Padshahnama and with formal, jewel like durbar scenes. Option D, Sher Shah Suri, was an administrator of the Sur dynasty remembered for the rupiya, the Grand Trunk Road and the postal system, not for painting.

The correct answer is B, Andhra Pradesh. Kalamkari takes its name from kalam, a pen, and kari, work. Its two centres are Srikalahasti, where the design is drawn freehand with a bamboo pen and the subjects come from temple mythology, and Machilipatnam, where carved wooden blocks print repeated floral and Persian derived patterns. The cloth is treated with myrobalan and buffalo milk, and the colours are drawn from plants and iron salts.

Option A, Odisha, is the home of Pattachitra, painted on a cloth and tamarind paste support with Jagannath themes, which is the strongest distractor. Option C, Punjab, is known for phulkari embroidery, not painted cloth. Option D, Gujarat, has Rogan painting, Mata ni Pachedi temple cloth and Pithora wall painting, but Kalamkari is not its tradition.

The correct answer is C, F. N. Souza. Francis Newton Souza founded the Progressive Artists Group at Bombay in 1947 along with S. H. Raza, M. F. Husain, K. H. Ara, S. K. Bakre and H. A. Gade. The group broke with both academic realism and the revivalist mood of the Bengal School, and looked instead to modern European movements while keeping Indian subject matter, which makes it the starting point of modern Indian art.

Option A, Nandalal Bose, belonged to the earlier Bengal School and taught at Santiniketan. Option B, Jivya Soma Mashe, was the Warli tribal painter of Maharashtra who made the style known outside its villages. Option D, Nihal Chand, was the eighteenth century Kishangarh miniaturist who painted Bani Thani, separated from this group by two centuries.