Painting Schools of Rajasthan: Styles, Artists and Facts

Rajasthani painting, also called Rajput painting, is the miniature tradition that grew in the courts of the Rajput states from about the sixteenth century onward. It drew on the older western Indian manuscript style of the Jain palm-leaf and paper books, absorbed what it wanted from Mughal workshops, and then went its own way: brilliant flat colour, a strong outline, a love of landscape and animals, and subjects taken from devotional poetry rather than from court chronicles alone. For a Rajasthan examination this chapter is almost entirely a matter of matching, because the questions ask which school a painting belongs to, which ruler patronised it and which artist made it famous.

The four main schools

Scholars group the many court styles into four schools, each with its own sub-styles.

Mewar and its sub-styles

The Mewar school is the oldest of the four. Its first firmly dated work is a set of Ragamala paintings made at Chawand in 1605 by the artist Nisardin during the reign of Maharana Amar Singh I. The style reached its height at Udaipur under Maharana Jagat Singh I, who maintained a painting workshop in the palace, and the master of that workshop was Sahibdin, whose illustrated Ramayana, Bhagavata Purana and Rasikpriya are the best known Mewar manuscripts. Mewar painting likes a red or yellow background, figures with large eyes and a short stature, and scenes packed with incident.

Nathdwara became a sub-style of its own after the image of Shrinathji was brought from Vrindavan and installed there in 1672. Its speciality is the Pichhwai, a large cloth painting hung behind the deity and changed with the season or the festival, filled with cows, peacocks, lotuses, the kadamba tree and scenes of Krishna's life. Devgarh, a thikana of Mewar, produced its own vigorous style with artists such as Bagta and Chokha.

Marwar: Jodhpur, Bikaner and Kishangarh

The Jodhpur style favours camels, horses, mango trees and tall turbans, and the romance of Dhola and Maru, the lovers riding a camel, is its signature subject. Bikaner painting is the most Mughal-influenced of the Rajasthani styles, worked by families such as that of Ruknuddin and Ali Raza, and Bikaner is also the home of Usta art, the gold ornamentation done on camel hide.

Kishangarh is the most famous of all. Under Raja Sawant Singh, a poet who wrote under the name Nagaridas, the painter Nihal Chand created the portrait known as Bani Thani, which the art historian Eric Dickinson called the Indian Mona Lisa. The Kishangarh face is unmistakable: a long curving eye shaped like a lotus petal, an arched eyebrow, a sharp nose, a pointed chin and a long neck, set against the water of the Gundalao lake. The figures of Radha and Krishna in this style are among the finest in Indian painting.

Hadoti: Bundi and Kota

Bundi is the older of the two and is the great painter of nature. Its pictures are full of mango and kadamba trees, lotus ponds, blue-green water, dark rain clouds and birds, and the Baramasa, the twelve months of the year, is its favourite theme. The Chitrashala at Bundi, built in the time of Rao Raja Ummed Singh, carries some of the finest wall paintings in Rajasthan. Kota separated from Bundi in the seventeenth century and developed a speciality of its own, the shikar or hunting scene, especially the tiger hunt in a thick forest, which reached its peak under Maharao Ram Singh II.

Dhundhar: Jaipur, Alwar and Shekhawati

The Amber and Jaipur style is the most formal, with large portraits, ceremonial processions and a liberal use of gold. Sawai Pratap Singh was its greatest patron, and the painter Sahib Ram is remembered for life-size portraits. Alwar is known for extremely fine brushwork and for miniature painting done on ivory. Shekhawati is different in kind: its merchants covered the outer and inner walls of their havelis with frescoes, which is why the region is often called an open-air art gallery.

Folk painting traditions

• Phad: long cloth scrolls narrating the deeds of the folk deities Pabuji and Devnarayan, painted by the Joshi families of Shahpura in Bhilwara and sung before the scroll by a Bhopa.
• Kavad: a small wooden shrine with hinged doors that open panel by panel as the story is told, made at Bassi in Chittorgarh.
• Mandana: the geometric designs women draw on floors and walls with chalk and red ochre at festivals.
• Usta or Munawwat work: raised gold work on camel hide, leather and walls, associated with Bikaner.