Art & Culture · Topic 6 of 16
Indian painting from prehistoric rock art through murals, manuscript and miniature schools to modern and folk painting
The Basics
Long before books, temples or settled villages existed, prehistoric people in India painted on rock walls. These paintings are India's earliest surviving art. They are also our earliest window into how early humans thought and lived.
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By the time Buddhist monks and temple builders began decorating caves and shrines, painting had changed form. It moved from open rock shelters to prepared walls inside man-made or rock-cut structures. This new form is called a mural, meaning a painting made directly on a wall or other solid surface, as opposed to being painted on cloth, paper or palm leaf. Indian murals are generally dated across a long span, roughly from the 10th century BCE to the 10th century CE. They are found at sites such as Ajanta, Bagh, Sittanavasal, Ellora and the Armamalai cave.
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By the late Vakataka period, around the 5th century CE, Ajanta moved beyond architecture and sculpture. Caves gained full-scale murals on their walls, ceilings, doorframes and pillars.
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Not far in style or time from Ajanta, another group of monks commissioned rock-cut caves at a site called Bagh. Bagh lies in present-day Dhar district, Madhya Pradesh, about 97 kilometres from the district town. The caves stand on the bank of the seasonal Baghani stream.
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Badami caves in Karnataka were excavated under the early Chalukyan dynasty.
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By the 7th century, power in Tamil Nadu had passed from the Chalukyas to the Pallavas. The Pallavas continued the Chalukya custom of painting temple walls and ceilings, begun at Badami.
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By the thirteenth century, Chola power had declined, and a new empire, the Vijayanagara Empire, rose in its place between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. It controlled the region from Hampi to Trichy, with Hampi as its capital, and its rulers continued the southern custom of painting temple ceilings, the same custom seen earlier at Kanchipuram and Thanjavur.
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Kerala murals developed between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries on temple and palace walls.
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By the 8th century, eastern India under the Pala dynasty had become the last great stronghold of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent. Nalanda and Vikramashila were already famous centres of learning. Monks there copied and studied Buddhist manuscripts and carried them to distant lands.
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The Pala dynasty ruled eastern India from about 750 CE to the mid-twelfth century. Under Pala patronage, Nalanda and Vikramashila grew into the last great centres of Buddhist learning and art in India, and this is where the palm leaf manuscripts of the previous note were produced.
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Western Indian or Jain School flourished in Gujarat and Rajasthan, from about 11th to 15th century.
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By the late 12th century, Sultanate dynasties of Central Asian, Turkic and Afghan origin ruled large parts of north, east and west India. They brought Persian artistic habits into court life. Persian painters and ideas reached Indian courts alongside Persian language and administration.
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From the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, princely kingdoms and thikanas (small feudal estates) of Rajasthan began supporting their own painting workshops. These included Mewar, Bundi, Kota, Jaipur, Bikaner, Kishangarh, Jodhpur and Malwa. These Rajput courts did not simply copy the Mughal court. They built on the older Jain School's flat, bold style while also absorbing new influences around them.
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Mewar school of painting flourished at the Udaipur court in Rajasthan.
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Bundi and Kota schools of painting flourished in Rajasthan.
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Malwa School of Painting flourished between 1600 and 1700 CE in Central India.
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Bikaner is a Rajasthani kingdom founded by Rao Bika Rathore in 1488.
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Kishangarh state was founded in 1609 by Kishan Singh, a son of the Jodhpur ruler.
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Jodhpur school flourished under Maharaja Jaswant Singh in the seventeenth century.
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By the sixteenth century, Indian painting already had a long history. It included the murals of Ajanta and the Jain and Sultanate manuscript traditions. Into this setting came the Mughal dynasty. Mughal rulers were serious patrons of the arts. From the time of Humayun's return from Persia, they began bringing Persian master painters into India.
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Akbar ruled from 1556 to 1605. He inherited Humayun's love of painting. Humayun had brought two Persian masters, Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd us Samad, from the court of Shah Tahmasp of Persia. Akbar's court historian Abul Fazal records that Akbar employed more than a hundred artists. His atelier combined the finest Persian and Indian painters. Akbar is said to have had dyslexia, a condition causing difficulty in reading. This made him value illustrated manuscripts read aloud by a narrator.
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Jahangir ruled from 1605 to 1627, after Akbar had already built a large imperial atelier that mass-produced illustrated manuscripts like the Hamzanama. As Prince Salim, Jahangir had shown interest in art from a young age, but his taste differed from his father's. Akbar commissioned works of political and religious importance, while Salim preferred delicate observation and fine detail, especially of nature.
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Shah Jahan (1628–1658) favoured stylised, formal portraits over natural, lively scenes.
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Deccani painting flourished in Ahmadnagar, Bijapur and Golconda from the sixteenth century.
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Pahari painting flourished in Himalayan hill states like Basohli, Guler and Kangra, from the seventeenth to nineteenth century.
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The Guler style developed from the Basohli style in the early eighteenth century.
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Company School painting was a hybrid style made for British patrons in colonial India.
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Bengal School was a Swadeshi art movement led by Abanindranath Tagore in Calcutta, early 20th century.
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Raja Ravi Varma was a self-taught painter from the Travancore court in Kerala.
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Nandalal Bose led painting at Kala Bhavana, Shantiniketan, India's first national art school.
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The Progressive Artists' Group formed in Bombay in 1946, before Independence.
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Away from royal courts and dated manuscripts, villagers and tribal communities across India never stopped painting. Long before any dynasty ruled, hunters and gatherers painted the Bhimbetka rock shelters using natural pigments. They depicted daily life, hunting and dance on available surfaces. Folk and tribal painting continues this same instinct. It is carried forward by villagers, forest-dwelling tribes and itinerant artist communities, not by court-appointed painters under royal patronage.
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Madhubani or Mithila painting comes from the Mithila region of northern Bihar, around Madhubani town.
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Warli painting is a tribal wall art from Northern Maharashtra, with a large concentration in Thane district.
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Gond painting is from the Gond tribal region of Madhya Pradesh.
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Pattachitra is cloth or palm-leaf scroll painting from Odisha, centred at Puri and Raghurajpur.
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Phad is a long horizontal cloth scroll painting from the Bhilwara region of Rajasthan.
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Kalamkari is a painting and printing tradition on cotton cloth from Andhra Pradesh.
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Cheriyal scroll painting is a narrative art form from Telangana.
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Thangka is a Buddhist scroll painting on cotton canvas.
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Pithora painting is a ritual wall painting of the Rathwa Bhil tribe.
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Tikuli art of Bihar paints on hardboard with enamel coats, using Madhubani motifs.
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