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

354 THE HINDU RENAISSANCE
'
Krishna. We may suppose that, as must often
have been the case, the illicit loves of Krishna
and Radha provided a special sublimation for
the sexual ideals of the patron, if not a justification
for covert amorous adventures. Frequently,
the setting for the events from the
Krishna legend is in the fantastic palaces and
gardens at Nadaun. Kangra art began with the
immigration of artists from Guler in 1780, and
the Kangra style is only a more exquisite, softer
refinement of this neighbouring school.
We may take as a typical example the
beautiful page of the Hour of Cowdust, representing
Krishna returning with the cows to
Brindaban, welcomed by the adoring gopis
[285]. We notice in the first place that in this
school of Rajput painting the intention of the
artist is realistic. The entirely intuitive attempts
at rendering complicated effects of perspective
and foreshortening are based on observation.
This point of view, together with a suggestion of
a kind of atmospheric perspective in the hazy
outlines of trees in the background, may very
possibly reflect the influence of Mogul, or even
European, painting on the Kangra style. The
question of possible foreign influences, beyond
making for a more effective expression, is unimportant
beside the real, and in many ways
The Kangra
new, beauty of the Kangra style.
miniatures can best be defined as coloured drawings,
since their peculiarly lyric quality depends
almost entirely on the exquisite, meaningful
definition of forms in linear terms. The female
figures are imbued with an attenuated, moving
grace. Although conceived as types, they have
an entirely individual quality of voluptuousness
and attraction, imparted perhaps most of all by
the rhythmic elegance of their pose and gestures.
The drawing of the herd of cows is masterly in
its suggestion of the animals pressing towards
the village gate and in the artist's realization
of the essential articulation and movement of
individual beasts. The colours are only incidental
to the perfection of the brittle, linear
skeleton. There is a soft, powdery harmony in
the pattern of the chrome-yellow and vermilion
notes of the women's garments, set off by the
chalky whiteness of the architecture which is
peculiar to the Kangra school. So animated and
natural in terms of everyday life is this presentation
of an event from the legend of Krishna that
it may be described as a kind of loving idealization
of the village life of Hindustan, a transfiguration
of day-to-day experience in much the
same way that Duccio's 'Entry into Jerusalem'
commemorated a sacred event in terms of the
life of fourteenth-century Siena. This illustration
is completely typical of Indian art in the
way in which the realm of sacred legend is, as
in the Ajanta frescoes, presented as contemporary
experience. It is but one more example of
the endless variety which could be achieved
within the set themes of Hindu art, themes
within which the artist was expected to express
his originality. Hindu art, both hieratic and
vernacular, has always been more or less a
national art, determined by the wish to have
certain groups of ideas constantly represented.
The State of Garwhal with its capital at
Srinagar produced the last phase of Pahari art
in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. The principal formative influence in
this school, as at Kangra, seems to stem from
Guler and reveals itself in the precisely etched
heads and the lyric delicacy of drawing.
Peculiar to Garwhal painting is the emotional
palette of dark greens and blacks and the
emotionally turbulent landscapes and the
setting for dramas of passion. A particularly
notable example is The Night of Storm [286],
painted in the last decades of the eighteenth
century. As W. G. Archer has so admirably
analysed it, the picture is a web of symbols
alluding to the plight of the lovesick girl racing
through the tempestuous night to meet her
love. 10 The cobras slithering on the ground