The Rajasthani Schools of Painting

Written and reviewed by Subhra Gupta, Humanities faculty at UniDrill (M.A. Sociology, University of Delhi · 7 years teaching Humanities). Based on NCERT Fine Arts Class XII (An Introduction to Indian Art Part II), Chapter 2.

Same story, different court: why does Krishna look different in every kingdom?

Put a Krishna and Radha painting from Kishangarh next to one from Bundi and you would think they were made in different countries. In Kishangarh the faces are long and elegant, with arched eyebrows. In Bundi the women are petite with round faces. Yet the two kingdoms are only a short ride apart. This chapter explains the reason: each court had its own ruler, its own taste, its own artists and its own history with the Mughals. The stories are shared, but the style belongs to the court.

What "Rajasthani" covers

The term Rajasthani Schools of Painting refers to the schools of the princely kingdoms and thikanas of what roughly forms Rajasthan and parts of Madhya Pradesh today: Mewar, Bundi, Kota, Jaipur, Bikaner, Kishangarh, Jodhpur (Marwar), Malwa and Sirohi, among others. They flourished largely between the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Two views. For the exam: in 1916 the scholar Anand Coomaraswamy coined the term "Rajput Paintings" for this group, to set it apart from the better known Mughal School. He included Malwa and the Pahari Schools of the Himalayan region in it. Today that term is considered obsolete, and the specific categories Rajasthani and Pahari are used. Another reading: the old label stressed the patrons' community and an indigenous tradition that existed before Mughal rule. The newer labels stress the place where the style grew, which fits the evidence that the schools differ so much from one another.

How a Rajasthani painting was made

Paintings were painted on waslis: thin sheets of handmade paper, layered and glued together to get the thickness needed. The outline was drawn in black or brown, and colours were fixed with brief notations or sample patches. Pigments came mainly from minerals and precious metals such as gold and silver, mixed with glue as the binder. Brushes were made of camel hair and squirrel hair. When the work was done it was burnished with an agate to give an even sheen.

It was teamwork. The master artist composed the picture and did the first drawings. Pupils or specialists in colouring, portraits, architecture, landscape and animals then took over, and the master put on the finishing touches. The scribe wrote the verse in the space that had been left for it.

Why Krishna dominates the themes

By the sixteenth century, devotion to Rama and Krishna, part of the Bhakti movement that swept the subcontinent, had become popular in western, northern and central India. Krishna had a special appeal. He was worshipped as God and also as the ideal lover, and love was cherished as a religious theme in which sensuousness and mysticism were combined. Krishna was seen as the creator from whom all creation was a sportive emanation, and Radha as the human soul that offers itself to God. This is why a love story could be painted as a spiritual one.

Other favourite texts were the Ramayana, Bhagvata Purana, Mahabharata and Devi Mahatmya, and bardic or romantic tales such as Dhola-Maru, Sohni-Mahiwal, Mrigavat, Chaurpanchashika and Laurchanda. A large number of paintings also record darbar scenes, hunts, wars, picnics, garden parties, music and dance, festivals, weddings, royal portraits, city views, birds and animals.

Pause and predict: a painting illustrates the Baramasa. Which poet wrote it, and for whom?

Check your answer: Keshav Das, in the tenth chapter of the Kavipriya, written in honour of Rai Parbin of Orchha. It describes the twelve months, the festivals in each season and how the heroine begs her beloved not to leave.

Ragamala: music turned into pictures

A Ragamala is a set of pictorial interpretations of ragas (male musical modes) and raginis (their female counterparts). Poets and musicians imagine ragas in divine or human form in romantic or devotional settings. Each raga is tied to a specific mood, time of the day and season.

Ragamala albums nearly always have 36 or 42 folios arranged as families. Each family is headed by a male raga with six female consorts, the raginis. The six main ragas are Bhairava, Malkos, Hindol, Dipak, Megha and Shri.

Why it matters. A Ragamala is the one theme that every Rajasthani school painted, and almost every school in this chapter has a famous dated example. If a question asks for a "dated Ragamala", match it to its school using the master table below.

The school map in one table

Malwa: the simple, flat early school

The Malwa School flourished between 1600 and 1700 and is most representative of the Hindu Rajput courts. Its two dimensional, simple language is the culmination of a line that runs from the Jain manuscripts to the Chaurpanchashika paintings. Unlike the other schools it has no single capital. It points to a wide area of Central India with a scattered mention of Mandu, Nusratgarh and Narsyang Sahar.

Early dated sets include an illustrated Amaru Shataka of 1652 and a Ragamala by Madho Das of 1680. A large number of Malwa paintings were found in the Datia Palace collection, which suggests Bundelkhand as a home of the school. The Datia murals show clear Mughal influence, unlike the works on paper, which remain austere and two dimensional. Since kings and portraits are missing, the paintings may have been bought by the Datia rulers from travelling artists carrying popular themes.

Where the other schools sit in time. The Mughal School dominates from the sixteenth century through the courts of Delhi, Agra, Fatehpur Sikri and Lahore. The Deccani School flourishes from the sixteenth century in Ahmednagar, Bijapur, Golconda and Hyderabad. The Rajasthani Schools rise in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, and the Pahari School follows in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth.

Mewar: the school of the great storytellers

Mewar is considered an early centre of painting, but long wars with the Mughals have wiped out most of the early examples. So the school is usually traced from a dated Ragamala painted at Chawand in 1605 by Nisardin. Its colophon names artist, place and date. Its look is direct and simple, with vibrant colours and sparing decoration.

The reign of Jagat Singh I (1628 to 1652) is seen as a turning point. Under the artists Sahibdin and Manohar the style was reformulated and gained new energy. Sahibdin painted the Ragamala (1628), Rasikapriya, Bhagvata Purana (1648) and the Yuddha Kanda of the Ramayana (1652). Manohar's most important work is the Bal Kanda of the Ramayana (1649). Jagannath painted the Bihari Satsai in 1719, a unique contribution of Mewar. The Harivamsha and Sursagar were also illustrated in the last quarter of the seventeenth century.

The Yuddha Kanda, the Book of Battles, belongs to the set popularly called the Jagat Singh Ramayana. Sahibdin devised an oblique aerial perspective to make large war scenes believable, and he either packs several episodes into one painting or spreads one episode over several folios. The folio shows Indrajit's tricks and magic weapons in battle.

In the eighteenth century Mewar painting moved away from texts to court life: portraits, big showy court scenes, hunts, festivals, zenana activities and sports. A folio of Maharaja Jagat Singh II (1734 to 1752) hawking (1744) shows the countryside from an oblique viewpoint with a raised horizon, which lets the artist show a panoramic view while reporting the event.

Nathdwara, close to Udaipur and a prominent Vaishnava centre, became a school of painting in the late seventeenth century. Its large cloth backdrops, called pichhwais, were painted for the deity Shrinathji for festivals.

Bundi: the colourful forest school

The Bundi school is known for its pure colour sense and excellent design. The Bundi Ragamala of 1591 was painted at Chunar in the reign of the Hada Rajput ruler Bhoj Singh (1585 to 1607). A Persian inscription names its artists as Shaykh Hasan, Shaykh Ali and Shaykh Hatim, who call themselves pupils of the Mughal masters Mir Sayyid Ali and Khwaja Abdus Samad. Bhoj Singh and his father Rao Surjan Singh had a palace at Chunar, near Benaras.

Bundi and Kota share a love of lush vegetation, thick jungle, water bodies, wildlife and birds, and a series of equestrian portraits. Their elephants are unsurpassed. Bundi's women have round faces, receding foreheads, sharp noses, full cheeks, sharply pencilled eyebrows and a pinched waist. In the eighteenth century Bundi painting took on the Deccani love of bright, vivid colour.

Raga Dipak from the Chunar set is a night scene. The raga sits with his beloved in a chamber warmly lit by four lamps, two of them shaped like ornate human figures. The sky is full of stars and the moon is turning yellow, showing that many hours of the night have passed. The finial of the palace dome pokes into a yellow patch kept for writing and only the label "Dipak Raga" is written. This shows that the painting was finished first and the scribe came later; here the verse was never added.

Pause and predict: in Raga Dipak the palace finial pushes into the yellow patch kept for writing, and only a label is written there. What does this tell you about the order of work?

Check your answer: the painting was finished before the scribe was called, so the verse was meant to be added afterwards. Here it never was, and the label was only a reminder to the artist of what to paint.

Baramasa is a popular theme in Bundi, drawn from the tenth chapter of Keshav Das's Kavipriya.

Kota: the school of the hunt

Bundi and Kota were part of the same kingdom until 1625, when Jahangir divided it and gave one part to Madhu Singh, a younger son of Rao Ratan Singh, for bravery in defending him against the rebellion of his son Prince Khurram (later Shah Jahan) in the Deccan. Kota began its own school in the 1660s during the reign of Jagat Singh (1658 to 1683).

At first Kota painters borrowed from Bundi, even copying compositions word for word, so the two cannot be told apart for several decades. Slowly Kota's flair for drawing took over, and the school became strikingly individual. By Ram Singh I (1686 to 1708) the range of subjects had widened, and Kota artists seem to have been the first to treat landscape as the real subject of a composition.

Umed Singh (1770 to 1819) became king at the age of ten. His regent Zalim Singh kept him amused with hunting while he ran the state. The young king spent most of his time on hunts, and paintings served as flattering records of his deeds. The chase became a social ritual that even the women of the court joined.

Kota paintings are spontaneous and calligraphic in execution and stress marked shading, especially the double lid eye. Kota artists excelled in animals and combat. A famous example is Maharaja Ram Singh I of Kota hunting lions at Mukundgarh (1695).

Bikaner: the best documented school

Rao Bika Rathore founded Bikaner in 1488. Anup Singh (1669 to 1698) set up a library that became a store of manuscripts and paintings. Long ties with the Mughals gave Bikaner a distinctive language marked by Mughal elegance and a subdued palette.

Inscriptions show that master artists of the Mughal atelier visited Bikaner in the seventeenth century. Karan Singh employed Ustad Ali Raza, a master painter from Delhi, whose early work (c. 1650) marks the beginning of the school. Under Anup Singh the master artist was Ruknuddin, whose style combined the local idiom with Deccani and Mughal habits. He painted the Ramayana, Rasikapriya and Durga Saptashati. Ibrahim, Nathu, Sahibdin and Isa also worked in his atelier. Ruknuddin's work has soft colour tones, while Ibrahim's has a misty, dreamlike quality and his studio, the most prolific, appears on sets of Baramasa, Ragamala and Rasikapriya.

When a painting was completed, the court archivist wrote the name of the master and the date on the back. This practice meant that the master's name could appear on works of pupils who did not paint in his style.

Kishangarh: the most stylised school

Kishan Singh, a son of the king of Jodhpur, founded Kishangarh in 1609. By the mid seventeenth century, in the time of Man Singh (1658 to 1706), artists were already working there. A distinct style had grown by the early eighteenth century under Raj Singh (1706 to 1748), marked by elongated figures, lavish use of green and a taste for panoramic landscapes. Raj Singh was initiated into the Pushtimargiya cult of Vallabhacharya, so Krishna Lila themes became a family favourite.

The finest Kishangarh artist was Nihal Chand, who worked for Sawant Singh from 1735 to 1757. Sawant Singh wrote devotional poetry on Radha and Krishna in Brajbhasha under the pen name Nagari Das. Nihal Chand painted the divine lovers in courtly settings, often tiny in a vast panoramic landscape with brilliantly coloured vistas.

Bani Thani. Sawant Singh is said to have loved a young singer, an attendant of Raj Singh's wife and a gifted poet, singer and dancer, who was given the title Bani Thani, "the bewitching lady of fashion". His poem Bihari Jas Chandrika about her became the basis of Nihal Chand's painting of her as Radha. Troubled by conflict among kinsmen, Sawant Singh abdicated in 1757 and retired to Vrindavan with her.

The painting shows a Radha with deeply curved eyes, an exaggerated arch to the eyebrows, a pointed nose, a serpentine curl of hair spiralling down the cheek, thin lips and a pronounced chin. The Kishangarh face is believed to have come from her sharp features.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: Bani Thani is Nihal Chand's painting of Radha, drawn from Sawant Singh's poem, and it defines the Kishangarh face. In reality: the painting is so well known that it is often called the Indian Mona Lisa, because one face has come to stand for a whole school. In answers, use the names Bani Thani and Nihal Chand.

Jodhpur (Marwar): the folk spirit holds out

Mughal power from the sixteenth century influenced portraiture and court scenes in Jodhpur, but the strong indigenous folk style was so deeply rooted that it survived in most illustrated sets. One of the earliest sets, painted at Pali, is a Ragamala by the artist Virji in 1623.

A productive period began under Maharaja Jaswant Singh (1638 to 1678). Documentary painting through portraiture and the depiction of court life started around 1640 and remained important until photography took over the job of recording events in the nineteenth century. Jaswant Singh's devotion to the Vallabha cult of Shrinathji made Krishna themes popular, especially the Bhagvata Purana.

Ajit Singh (1679 to 1724) came to the throne after 25 years of war with Aurangzeb, fought by the legendary warrior Veer Durgadas Rathore, who recaptured Marwar. Durgadas is celebrated in poems and in court paintings, especially equestrian portraits.

The last innovative phase came under Man Singh (1803 to 1843), when sets such as the Ramayana (1804), Dhola-Maru, Panchatantra (1804) and Shiva Purana were painted. In the Ramayana the artist drew Rama's Ayodhya from Jodhpur itself, so the bazaars, lanes and gateways of the city appear. This is true of every school: local buildings, clothes and customs are woven into the stories of Krishna and Rama. Man Singh followed the Nath Sampradaya, and paintings of him with Nath gurus survive, along with the Nath Charita (1824).

Jaipur: the school nearest to the Mughals

Jaipur began at Amer, the Rajput capital closest to the Mughal centres of Agra and Delhi. Its rulers kept cordial relations with the Mughals. Raja Bharmal (1548 to 1575) married his daughter to Akbar, his son Bhagwant Das (1575 to 1592) was a close friend of Akbar, and Bhagwant Das's son Man Singh was Akbar's most trusted general.

Sawai Jai Singh (1699 to 1743) founded the city of Jaipur in 1727 and shifted the capital from Amer. The school became well defined and independent in his reign. Court records say some Mughal painters were brought from Delhi, and he reorganised the Suratkhana, the place where paintings were made and stored. Being drawn to Vaishnavism, he commissioned many paintings of Radha and Krishna, including sets of the Rasikapriya, Gita Govinda, Baramasa and Ragamala in which the hero's figure strongly resembles the king. Sahibram was a leading portraitist, and Muhammad Shah another artist.

Sawai Ishwari Singh (1743 to 1750) added scenes of leisure such as elephant rides, boar and tiger hunts and elephant fights. Sawai Madho Singh (1750 to 1767) had incidents of court life recorded.

Only in the time of Sawai Pratap Singh (1779 to 1803) did the strong Mughal influence recede, giving a Jaipur style that blended Mughal and indigenous features. This was the second thriving period, and he employed around 50 artists. He was a scholar, poet, prolific writer and ardent follower of Krishna. Copies were made by tracing and pouncing, gold was used lavishly by the early nineteenth century, and Jaipur liked large formats and life size portraits.

Timeline: from Chawand to Jaipur

Named paintings: what to notice

Two views. For the exam: the equestrian portrait of Aniruddha Singh is by Tulchi Ram (1680). Another reading: the name inscribed on its front is Bharat Singh, the youngest son of Rao Chattarsal, while the back names Tulchi Ram and Kanwar Aniruddha Singh. Most scholars hold that it shows the young Aniruddha before he became ruler, and a few think it shows Bharat Singh.

Key artists

Exam traps

60-second revision

Where this chapter connects

• Before: The Manuscript Painting Tradition supplies the indigenous style that grows into the Malwa and Mewar schools.
• Alongside: The Mughal School of Miniature Painting explains the influence behind Bikaner, Bundi and Jaipur.
• Next: The Pahari Schools of Painting follows the same themes into the Himalayan foothills.