Test: The Rajasthani Schools of Painting- 1 - Humanities/Arts MCQ

The Rajasthani school of painting refers to the schools of painting that prevailed in the princely kingdoms and thikanas of what roughly constitutes Rajasthan and parts of Madhya Pradesh.

Anand Coomaraswamy coined the term ‘Rajput Paintings’ to categorise and differentiate this group from the much known Mughal School of Painting.

Instead of the term ‘Rajput Schools,’ specific categories such as Rajasthani and Pahari are employed.

Waslis were layered, thin sheets of handmade papers glued together to get the desired thickness.

The predominant colour pigments were obtained from minerals and precious metals like gold and silver that were mixed with glue as the binding medium.

The painting activity was a kind of teamwork, with the master artist composing and doing preliminary drawings, followed by pupils or experts of colouring, portraiture, architecture, landscape, animals, etc., taking over and doing their bit, and finally, the master artist putting the finishing touches.

The main theme of the Gita Govinda paintings was the mystical love between Radha and Krishna through worldly imageries.

The article explains that by the sixteenth century, Vaishvanism in the cults of Rama and Krishna had become popular in many parts of western, northern and central India as part of the Bhakti movement. Krishna, in particular, had a special appeal as he was not only worshipped as God but also as an ideal lover. The notion of love was cherished as a religious theme, where a delightful synthesis of sensuousness and mysticism was perceived. The soul's devotion to the deity is pictured by Radha's self-abandonment to her beloved Krishna, which is epitomized in Gita Govinda paintings.

The Malwa School of Painting flourished between 1600 and 1700 CE and is most representative of the Hindu Rajput courts.

A large number of Malwa paintings discovered from the Datia Palace collection supports a claim for Bundelkhand as the region of painting.

Manohar’s most significant work is that of Bal Kanda of Ramayana (1649).

Nathdwara, a town close to Udaipur and a prominent Vaishnava center, emerged as a school of painting in the late seventeenth century.

The Mughal School dominated the scene from the sixteenth century through the courts of Delhi, Agra, Fatehpur Sikri and Lahore.

Sahibdin painted the Ragamala (1628), Rasikapriya, Bhagvata Purana (1648) and the Yuddha Kanda of Ramayana (1652).

The reign of Jagat Singh I (1628-1652) is recognised as the period when pictorial aesthetics got reformulated under virtuoso artists Sahibdin and Manohar.