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

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Pahari tradition. The Basohli artists retained
something of the primitive simplicity and rather
rigid angular quality of Mewar and Malwa
painting, combined with a fondness for warm
colours of burning intensity. Except for the use
of a suggestion of abstract shading, the Basohli
miniatures are completely different from any
Mogul manner in their smouldering brilliance
of colour and savage distortion. A typical
example is a late-seventeenth-century illustration
of the Rasamanjari of Bhanu Datta [283].
The poetic theme is drawn from the Krishna
legend. Radha in a forest pavilion desperately
awaits the return of her errant lover. The
composition is alive with symbols of erotic
283. Radha awaiting Krishna in the Rasamanjari
from Basohli.
London, Victoria and Albert Museum
anguish. In the attic of the plaisance the cat and
the empty bed are emblems of Radha's unrequited
desire, and the prowling rat a reference
to Krishna's wayward loves. This is a typical
example of the use of objects from everyday life
to symbolize sexual feelings.
In the early decades of the eighteenth century
there was an infiltration of Basohli artists into
the court of Guler, which, by its location near
the Plains, was of all the Pahari States most
subject to outside influences.
The painting of