ANCIENT PERIOD: ORIGIN
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The history of art and
painting in India begins with the pre-historic rock painting at Bhimbetka caves (M.P.) where we have drawings and paintings of
animals.
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The cave paintings of Narsinghgarh (Maharashtra) show skins of spotted deer left drying.
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Thousands of years ago,
paintings and drawings had already appeared on the seals of Harappan
civilization.
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The Buddhist text Vinayapitaka (4th–3rd century) describes the existence of
painted figuresin many royal buildings.
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The play Mudrarakshasa (5th Century A.D.) mentions numerous
paintings or Patas.
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The 6th Century AD text on aesthetics-Kamasutra by Vatsyayana hasmentioned painting
amongst 64 kinds of arts and says that it was based on scientific principles.
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The best specimens of Gupta paintings are the ones at Ajanta. Their subject was
animals and birds, trees, flowers, human figures and stories from the Jataka.
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Mural paintings are done on walls and rock surfaces like roofs and sides.
Materials used in the
paintings :
·
Mention of chitra shalas
(artgallery) and Shilpasashtra (technical treatises on art) have been made in
literary sources.
·
However, the principal
colours used were red ochre, vivid red , yellow ochre , indigo (blue) lapis lazuli blue, lampblack , chalk white and green.
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All these colours were
locally available except lapis lazuli which
came from Pakistan.
·
Mixed colours e.g. grey
were used on rare occasions.
ART IN MEDIEVAL India :
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During the period of Delhi Sultanate, mural painting has been reported from the royal palaces and
royal bed-chambers and mosques.
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During the time of Iltutmish (1210-36) we have references of paintings.
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During the time of Alauddin Khalji (1296-1316) we have mural painting, miniature painting (of
illustrated manuscripts) and paintings on cloths.
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During the Sultanate period, we notice the
Persian and Arabic influences on Indian painting.
·
The decorative paintings of
the palace of the Gwalior king
Man Singh Tomar impressed both Babur and
Akbar.
·
During 14th – 15th centuries A.D. miniature painting
emerged as a powerful movement
in Gujarat and Rajasthan and spread to Central, North and Eastern India because
of the patronage of rich Jain merchants.
·
In Eastern India, in
Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, during the Pala kingdom in the 9th – 10th century A.D., a new kind
of painting developed called the miniature painting.
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The miniature, as the name suggests, were small
works which were made on perishable materials.
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In this category,
Buddhist, Jain and Hindu manuscripts were illustrated, on palm leaves.
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From the thirteenth
century onwards, the Turkish Sultans of northern India brought with them
important features of Persian court
culture.
·
In the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries illustrated manuscripts of Persian influence were produced at Malwa, Bengal, Delhi, Jaunpur, Gujarat and the
Deccan.
·
The art of textual illustration got a new look
under the Mughals. Akbar and his
successors brought revolutionary changes to painting and sensual illustrations.
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From this period book illumination or individual
miniatures replaced wall painting as the most vital form of art.
·
Emperor Akbar patronised
artists from Kashmir and Gujarat;
·
Humayun brought two Persian painters to his court. For
the first time painters’ names were recorded in inscriptions.
·
Some great painters of
this period were Abd-us-Samad Dasawanth
and Basawan.
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Between 1562 and 1577 a series of nearly 1400 cloth paintings were produced representing the new style and were placed in the
imperial studio.
·
Akbar also encouraged the
art of making portraits.
·
The art of painting
reached its climax during the period
of Jahangir who himself was a great painter
and connoisseur of art.
·
Artists began to use vibrant colours such as peacock blue and red and were able to give three
dimensional effects to paintings.
·
Mansur, Bishan Das and
Manohar were the most gifted painters of Jahangir’s time.
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However withdrawal of royal patronage to painting
under Aurangzeb led to the dispersal of
artists to different places in the country.
·
This helped in the
development of the art of painting in Rajasthan and the Punjab hills giving
rise to distinct schools of paintings, for example, Rajasthani and Pahari Schools.
ART IN THE MODERN PERIOD :
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In the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries paintings comprised semi westernized local styles which were patronised by British residents and
visitors.
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Themes were generally drawn
from Indian social life, popular festivals, and Mughal monuments.
·
Oil paintings of Raja
Ravi Varma of Travancore depicting mythological
and social themes became highly popular at this time.
·
Rabindranath Tagore,
Abanindranath Tagore, E.B. Havell and Ananda
Kehtish Coomaraswamy played an important role in the emergence of the Bengal school of Art.
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The Bengal School had a
great flowering at Shantiniketan where Rabindranath Tagore set up the Kala Bhavan.
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Talented artists like Nandalal Bose, Binod Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinkar Baij rendered training to
aspiring artists. Jamini Roy, another great painter of this period, drew
inspiration from Qrissa’s pata painting and Kalighat painting of Bengal.
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In 1943, during the
period of the second world war Calcutta painters led by Paritosh Sen, Niroda Majumdar and Pradosh
Dasgupta formed a group who
depicted the condition of the people of India through new visual language, and novel techniques.
·
Bombay in 1948 under
Francis Newton Souza. The group also included S .H. Raza, M.F. Hussain, K.M.
Ara, S.K. Bakre and H.A. Gode. This group broke away from Bengal School of Art
and represented the modern forceful art of independent India.
·
The Madras School of Art under Debi Prasad Roy
Chowdhury and K.C.S Paniker
emerged as an important art centre in post independence period and influenced a
new generation of modern artists.
DECORATIVE ART:
·
The designs are called rangoli in the North, alpana in Bengal, aipan in
Uttaranchal, rangavalli in Karnataka, Kollam in Tamilnadu and mandana
in Madhya Pradesh.
·
Usually rice powder is
used for these paintings but coloured powder or flower petals are also used to
make them more colourful.
MITHILA PAINTING (Madhubani):
·
Mithila painting also
known as Madhubani folk art is the traditional art of the Mithila region of Bihar.
·
They are produced by village women who make three dimensional
images using vegetable colour
with few earthen colours and finished in black lines on cow dung treated paper.
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These pictures tell tales
especially about Sita’s exile, Ram-Laxman’s forest life, ordepict the images of
Lakshmi, Ganesha, Hanuman and others from Hindu mythology.
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They also show court
scenes, wedding and social happenings.
·
Drawings in Madhubani
pictures are very conceptual. First, the painter thinks and then she “draws her thought”.
KALAMKARI PAINTING : (2015 prelims)
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The literal meaning of
Kalamkari is a painting done by kalam (pen).
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These paintings are made
in Andhra Pradesh.
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It is hand painted as
well as block printing with
vegetable dyes applied on cloth.
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Vegetable dyes are used
for colour in the Kalam Kari work.
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A small place Sri-Kalahasti is the best known centre of Kalamkari art.
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This art is mainly
related to decorating temple
interiors with painted cloth panels,
which was developed in the fifteenth century under the patronage of Vijaynagar rulers.
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Every scene is surrounded
by floral decorative patterns.
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These paintings are made
on cloth. They are very durable and flexible in size and made according to
theme.
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The artists use a bamboo or date palm stick pointed at one end
with a bundle of fine hair attached to the other end to serve as brush or pen.
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The kalamkari dyes are obtained by extracting colours from plant
roots, leaves, along with salts of iron,
tin, copper, alum etc.
Orissa Patachitra:
·
Similar to Kalighat Pats, one comes across another kind of Pats which are found in the state
of Orissa.
·
The Orissa patachitras,
mostly painted on cloth are more detailed and more colourful and most of these depict
stories of Hindu gods and goddesses.
Phad Paintings:
·
Phad is a type of scroll painting.
·
This type of painting is
a most famous painting of Rajasthan, mainly found in the Bhilwara district.
·
The main themes of the
phad paintings depict the deities and their legends and the stories of erstwhile Maharajas.
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The unique features of
phad paintings are the bold lines and a two
dimensional treatment of figures with the entire composition arranged in sections.
Gond Art:
·
A very highly
sophisticated and abstract form of Art works are also produced by the Santhals
in India.
·
The Gond tribe of the
Godavari belt who are as old as the Santhals
produce
figurative works.
Batik Print;
·
Not all the folk arts and
crafts are entirely Indian in their origin. Some of the crafts and techniques
have been imported from the Orient
like the Batik.
·
But these have now been Indianised
and Indian Batik is now a matured art, immensely popular and expensive.
WARLI PAINTING :
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Warli painting derives
its name from a small tribe inhabiting the remote, tribal regions of Maharashtra.
·
These are decorative
paintings on floors and walls of ‘gond’ and ‘kol’
tribes’ homes and places of worship.
·
These paintings are made
mostly by the women as part of their routine at auspicious celebrations.
·
Subjects are
predominantly religious with simple and local materials like white colour and rice
paste and local vegetable glue on plain
contrasting background, made in a geometric patterns like squares, triangles, and circles.
·
Unlike other tribal art
forms, Warli paintings do not employ
religious iconography and is a more secular
art form.
KALIGHAT PAINTING:
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Kalighat painting derives
its name from its place of origin Kalighat in Kolkata.
·
Kalighat is a bazaar near
the Kali temple in
Kolkota. Patua painters from
rural Bengal came and settled in Kalighat to make images of gods and goddesses
in the early nineteenth century.
·
These paintings on paper made with water colours
comprise clear sweeping line drawings using bright colours and a clear
background. Subjects are images of Kali, Lakshmi, Krishna, Ganesha, Shiva, and other gods and
goddesses.
·
This painting form has
its roots in the culture upheavds of 19th century colonial Bengal.
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Kalighat paintings became
the best mirror of this cultural and aesthetic shift.
