Rajput & Pahari Miniatures

Thirty-six miniature paintings from the Rajput courts of Rajasthan and the Pahari workshops of the Punjab Hills — a tradition of small-format painting on paper, executed in opaque watercolor and gold, that flourished from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. Rajput painting is the indigenous Hindu counterpart to the Mughal courts: where Mughal miniatures look outward to portrait, history, and natural observation, Rajput painting looks inward to mythology, devotion, and music. The Krishna legend dominates — the blue god dancing with cowherd girls in moonlit groves, lifting Mount Govardhan to shelter his people from the storm, sporting with Radha in the forests of Brindavan. Ragamala paintings give visual form to musical modes, each raga personified as a lover, a warrior, a forest scene, a season. Pahari painting from the small Himalayan kingdoms of Basohli, Guler, and Kangra brought a new lyricism in the late eighteenth century: figures grew slender, landscapes opened into tender greens, and the great Gita Govinda sequences of Kangra became among the most refined romantic paintings ever made in India. This collection spans Mewar Ramayana folios, Bhagavata Purana cycles, Ragamala paintings, the Nayika tradition of female types, and the Krishna-Radha works of the Pahari masters.