The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

35© THE HINDU RENAISSANCE
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Certainly, one of the most individual styles to
evolve in Rajasthan was the mode that flourished
in the late eighteenth century at the court of
Kishangarh. The rulers of this state were devoted
to the cult of Krishna, and a local artist,
perhaps Nihal Chand of Delhi, invented a
peculiarly personal type of beauty to represent
the immortal lovers Krishna and Radha [281].
The facial types, with their wildly attenuated
eyes and soaring brows, are a suave Mannerist
exaggeration of the Jaipur formula. They have a
fragile elegance and a wan, neurasthenic refinement
that are like an echo of the beauty of
Ikhnaton's queen.
281. Krishna and Radha from Kishangarh.
Cambridge, Mass., private collection
well as politically, Kotah was an extension of
the State of Bundi. The Bundi painters of the
eighteenth century had evolved a style of harsh
simplification, in which episodes from the hunt
were isolated as they had been a thousand years
earlier in the famous scenes of the chase in
Sasanian metalwork. Something of the same
sort, with an admixture of Mogul realism,
appears in the Kotah miniatures representing
the rulers indulging their passion for shooting
lions and tigers [282]. The painting illustrated,
with its precise and isolated forms placed in a
kind of luxuriant undersea landscape, might at
first remind us, as W. G. Archer has noted, of
Rousseau's jungles, palpitant with symbols of
erotic anticipation. 9 The ardour of the Kotah
paintings is not, however, the passion of love,
but the reckless ardour of the chase and its fulfilment
in the slaying of the quarry. Although
certain details, such as the characterization of
the hunters, suggest the realism of Mogul art,
this naturalism does not extend to the strange
fungiform rocks and the trees, like ornaments in
coral or jade, more reminiscent of Persian than
Indian tradition. Kotah painting has a naive
directness of narration and a simple ornamental
beauty which may have been directed to the
The style of Rajasthani painting which
flowered in Kotah State in the late eighteenth
century under the patronage of Rajah Umed
Singh (1771-1819) reveals how, artistically as
taste of the childlike ruler who sponsored it.
What was in many ways the most enchanting
chapter of Rajput painting unfolded in the
many small courts that had their seats in the
secluded valleys of the Punjab Hills. Nominally
under Mogul suzerainty, the rulers of these
isolated principalities were able to cultivate
their political and artistic tastes in relative
security during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. There is no evidence for the existence
of any earlier traditions in the Pahari centres
before the emergence of these court schools of
miniature painting.
Basohli was the earliest of the schools of
painting in the Punjab Hills and provides a
transition from the Rajasthani style to the
elegantly refined manner which became the