Page 124 - Eye of the beholder

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RAJPUT MINIATURE TRADITION
Rajputs were the descendants from Gurjara Pratihara and Huns and other Central Asian tribes who invaded India in the 5th and 6th centuries A.D. and brought about the disintegration of the Gupta Empire. They ensured their validity of rule by the legend of divine origins and in time they were accepted as overlords in feudal and martial society. The credit for discovering Rajput paintings goes to the pioneer scholar of Indian Art History A. K. Coomarswamy. In his monumental work of two volumes, he established the indigenous character of Rajput painting as religious and Hindu. Rajput painting can be broadly classified into three styles based on geographic and stylistic differences: Rajasthani, Central Indian and Pahari School, each a composite unit comprising many sub schools.
The origins of Rajasthani School of Miniature Painting were the natural outcome of a long sequence of an art tradition that arose out of illustrated books. Indian miniatures as it developed and evolved became an expression of a vision of intricate colorful illuminations that offered sheer visual delight premised on line and colour often described as visual poetry. It is small in size; executed meticulously with delicate brushwork. Its ubiquitous saliencies were the rendering of details with jewel like precision, absolute facility of the artists in handling the brush, exquisite decorative patterning and brilliant use of colours. An important characteristic of Indian miniatures is that it does not employ single point perspective as practiced in the Western European tradition, but demonstrates the representation of visual reality from different viewpoints. When multiple view points were presented by the Indian miniaturist, the idea was to convey more than what the eyes normally perceives. This approach though not naive was the interest in conveying reality that existed behind walls and doors, or on the other side of a hill or a tree. These attempts were not merely simplistic, but reflected larger goals. It was an effort to demonstrate that reality was more than what could be observed from a single focal point or a single perspective, and that reality existed unseen from a certain vantage point, yet required to be conveyed.
Rajasthan was a hotbed of political and military activity in medieval times, and as a result, dozens of states emerged. The term Rajasthani is applied to the schools which flourished between the 16th and early 19th century in the principalities of Rajasthan or the abode of princes. It is divided into two regions by the Aravalli hills which roughly run north to south; with desert states in the west as of Jodhpur, Bikaner and Jaiselmer reaching up to the Indus River. To the east of the Aravalli lay the more temperate regions that stretch as far as the Chambal River. These were divided into many feudal states among which the most important from the viewpoint of painting were Mewar Bundi, Jaipur, Kishangarh, Jodhpur and Kota. Painting in Rajasthan characteristically started with Mewar and then spread to Bundi. The next phase saw the predominantly Mughal art patronized in Jaipur, Jaiselmer and Jodhpur. A sudden spurt of indigenous flowering of distinctive style was seen in Kishangarh in the second half of the eighteenth century. The hunting scenes of Kota brought to a close the history of Rajasthani painting.