Paintings made to be held in the hand
The history of Rajput painting is often told through families: a father who trained at Udaipur, a son who moved to Deogarh, a grandson who painted for Nathdwara. When a ruler's taste changed, or a painter moved courts, the style moved with him. Our guides love to trace these threads in front of the paintings themselves.
What they are: small works on paper made for the courts of Rajasthan from about the sixteenth century onwards.
Made in sets: a Ramayana or Bhagavata Purana told in dozens of pictures, a ragamala giving each musical mode a scene and a mood, or a barahmasa of the twelve months.
- Great schools
- Mewar, Bundi, Kota, Kishangarh, Jaipur, Marwar, Bikaner
- From
- About the sixteenth century
- Size
- Usually no larger than a book page
- Materials
- Mineral and plant colours, gold, burnished paper
- Time to allow
- Two hours to visit, a morning for a lesson
- Court subjects: portraits, hunts, festivals and court scenes.
- Looked at slowly: at close range, often with verse read aloud, which is why every leaf, jewel and eyelash is painted with such care.
- Western Indian painting: one of two great currents, flat and bold, with strong reds and yellows and faces in profile with a large staring eye.
- Mughal painting: the other, with fine detail, soft modelling and close study of people, plants and animals.
- How they met: Rajput rulers served in the Mughal army and spent years at the imperial court, and painters travelled too.
- Dozens of styles: every court mixed the two in its own way, each with its own palette, faces and favourite stories.
- The chiteras: families of painters, as they are called in many places, worked for a court for generations, passing down sketches, tracings and secrets of colour.
Reading the great schools, court by court
- Mewar
- Bold, flat, saturated colour
- Bundi and Kota
- Monsoon greens, the royal hunt
- Kishangarh
- Lotus eyes, wide calm lakes
- Jaipur
- Polished portraits, lavish gold
- Marwar and Bikaner
- Strong colour; refined finish
Mewar, the bold and the devout
An early school: Mewar was one of the first Rajput courts to develop its own style.
- The look: bold and flat, with saturated reds, yellows and greens, and scenes from Krishna's life, the epics and the ragas laid out like a stage.
- Sahibdin: in the seventeenth century, painters such as Sahibdin made great illustrated Ramayana and ragamala sets for the Maharanas.
- The court paints itself: later came the Maharana at Holi, boat parties on Pichola, hunts in the hills and festivals in the courtyards of the City Palace in Udaipur.
Bundi and Kota, the rains and the hunt
The greenest landscapes: the Hada courts of Hadoti painted banana groves, lotus ponds, heavy monsoon clouds edged in white and peacocks dancing in the rain.
- Bundi's palette: cool turquoise, green and blue, seen at its best in the murals of the Chitrashala.
- Kota: its rival, famous for the royal hunt, with tigers and rulers in dense forest.
- What to look for: our journal on the murals of Bundi explains.
Kishangarh, the lotus eye
Raja Sawant Singh: he came to the throne in 1748 and wrote poetry as Nagari Das.
- Nihal Chand: the master painter and his workshop created the most distinctive faces in Indian art: lotus-shaped eyes, high arched brows, sharp noses and long necks against wide, calm lakes.
- Bani Thani: the portrait of the singer, around 1750, is often called the Mona Lisa of India. Our Kishangarh guide tells the love story behind it.
Jaipur, portraits and pageantry
Closest to the Mughals: the Kachwaha court at Amer and then Jaipur absorbed Mughal portraiture early.
- The look: often large, polished and grand, with formal portraits of rulers, Krishna's dance with the gopis and lavish gold.
- Still painting: families of painters still work in the walled city and within the City Palace in Jaipur.
Marwar and Bikaner, the desert courts
Jodhpur: strong colours, big-eyed faces, royal processions and rulers on horseback.
- Man Singh's age: in the early nineteenth century his devotion to the Nath yogis inspired paintings of ascetics and mystical diagrams, some of which hang at Mehrangarh.
- Bikaner: its court drew Mughal-trained artists in the seventeenth century, and its paintings have a refined, delicate finish.
- The usta families: in Bikaner they still practise gold-leaf work today.
Deogarh and Nathdwara, the country and the temple
Deogarh: at Deogarh, Bagta, his son Chokha and grandson Baijnath created a lively style of wide landscapes, big skies and spirited hunts in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
- Nathdwara: at Nathdwara, painters work for the temple of Shrinathji, making pichwai, large cloths hung behind the deity, and small devotional paintings.
- More: our pichwai painting page explains that tradition.
From stone to colour: how a miniature is made
- Paper
- Wasli, pasted and burnished
- Binder
- Gum arabic
- Brush
- Squirrel hairs in a pigeon quill
- Burnisher
- Agate or polished stone
- Time
- Weeks for a small serious work
The paper
Wasli: several sheets of handmade paper pasted together with flour or starch paste into a stiff card, then burnished smooth.
- Other grounds: today also handmade paper, old ledger paper, silk and ivory-coloured synthetic boards.
- The test: smooth enough for a single hair to glide across without catching.
The colours
Reds and yellows: red from cinnabar and red earth, yellow from orpiment.
Greens and blues: green from malachite and earth, blue from indigo and, for the finest work, lapis lazuli.
- White and black: white from lime or shell, black from lamp soot.
- Grinding: each ground with water for hours, sometimes days, and mixed with gum arabic.
- Still by hand: the best painters grind their own and keep them in small shells or cups.
The brushes
Squirrel hair: fine hairs from a squirrel's tail, set into a pigeon quill and bound with thread.
- A few hairs: an outline brush may hold only a few, and painters often make their own, testing each on a fingernail.
- Guarded: a good brush lasts weeks, and a painter guards his favourites.
Drawing, filling and burnishing
The drawing: often from a family tracing, in a light red or ochre line.
The colour: the surface is primed with a thin white, then colours are laid in, area by area, in thin coats.
- Burnishing: between stages the painting lies face down on a smooth stone and is burnished with an agate, which compacts the colour and gives it a soft glow.
- Last of all: outlines, faces, jewellery and hair, with the finest brushes.
- Gold: beaten into leaf, ground with gum, applied as paint and burnished until it shines.
Weeks, not hours
Serious work: a small painting can take several weeks.
- Large work: a crowd of figures, an elaborate border and a lot of gold can take months.
- Souvenirs: a hurried one is done in an afternoon, and the difference is obvious once you have watched a real painter.
Where we arrange a studio visit or a lesson
Udaipur, the lanes below the City Palace
The most painters: old Udaipur has more working miniature painters than anywhere in Rajasthan, many around Jagdish Temple and below the palace.
- In the studio: the painter sits on the floor and lets you watch, grind a colour and try a line.
- How long: a visit takes an hour or two. A lesson fills a morning, and you leave with a small painting you began yourself.
- Pair it with: the palace's own painting galleries.
Bundi, after the Chitrashala
The Bundi style: a handful of painters in Bundi still work in it, on paper and silk.
- Same day: we arrange it after your morning in the Chitrashala, the murals and then the living craft.
- Serious artists: our guides know which painters are serious rather than souvenir sellers.
Kishangarh, in the town of Bani Thani
- The old style: a small number of painters in Kishangarh and nearby still paint it.
- A gentle half-day: a morning watching outlines laid with a single-hair brush, then tea beside Gundolav lake below the old palace, on the road between Jaipur and Pushkar.
Nathdwara, the street of paintings
Chitron ki Gali: almost every doorway opens on a painter at work on a pichwai or a small devotional picture of Shrinathji.
- With darshan: a visit pairs with darshan at the temple, an hour north of Udaipur.
- The themes: our journal on pichwai paintings explains them.
Jaipur and Deogarh
- Jaipur: painters work inside the City Palace precincts and in the walled city, and we arrange a quiet hour in a family studio rather than a showroom.
- Deogarh: a stay at Deogarh Mahal can include an hour with a painter in the old Deogarh manner, watching colours ground from stone and plant.
The collections worth a slow hour
Udaipur: the City Palace museum holds paintings of the Mewar court at festivals, hunts and boat parties on Pichola.
Jodhpur: Mehrangarh has one of the finest painting galleries of any Indian fort, with Marwar portraits and the paintings of Man Singh's age.
Jaipur: the City Palace and the Albert Hall Museum both keep miniatures.
- Udaipur
- City Palace museum, Mewar court
- Jodhpur
- Mehrangarh painting gallery
- Jaipur
- City Palace, Albert Hall Museum
- Bikaner
- Junagarh Fort museum
- Delhi
- The National Museum
- Bikaner: the museum at Junagarh Fort holds manuscripts and paintings of the court, and its painted, gilded rooms show the same hands on walls.
- Kota: the Garh Palace at Kota has painted rooms in the Kota style, famous for the hunt, and Bundi's Chitrashala is a painted gallery in its own right.
- Alwar: in Alwar, the Government Museum in the City Palace keeps illustrated manuscripts, ragamala sets and Alwar miniatures.
- Delhi: if you begin or end in Delhi, the National Museum has one of the world's great collections of Indian painting, including Kishangarh, Mewar, Bundi and Mughal works. A morning there makes every palace gallery richer.
- No flash: photography rules change from museum to museum, so we check on the day, and we never use a flash, which damages pigments.
- The walls: the same painters covered palaces, temples and merchants' houses, and murals survive where paper works have gone.
- Where to look: the painted rooms of Amber and Bikaner, the Chitrashala at Bundi and the frescoed havelis of Shekhawati, with gods, trains, soldiers and the occasional motorcar.
- A quiet pleasure: seeing Krishna lifting Govardhan, or a ruler at a hunt, first on a small page and then across a whole wall.
How to look at a miniature, in five minutes
Start with the border: many paintings sit inside painted margins, and an inscription at the top often names the story, the raga or the ruler.
Find the main figure: gods are often blue, rulers often have a halo, and the most important person is usually the largest, whatever the perspective.
- Follow the story: in a set, one figure can appear several times in a picture, doing different things as the story moves on.
- Look at the eyes: a long, curved lotus eye says Kishangarh, a round face and almond eye suggests Bundi, and a bold profile with a staring eye often means early Mewar.
- Read the weather: dark clouds and lightning mean longing and the monsoon, a full moon a night of love, bare trees separation.
- Look for the painter's world: the palaces, lakes, horses and costumes are often those of the court that made the painting.
- Lean close: without touching the glass. A hair, a pearl, a single eyelash only show from a hand's width away.
Buying a painting honestly
The souvenir trade: enormous, and much of it printed, traced or painted in a hurry with poster colours. Fine for a cheerful memento, but not what a serious painter makes.
A real miniature: crisp outlines that don't blur under a magnifying glass, faces and jewellery painted with obvious care, colours with depth and gold that has been burnished.
Work in progress: ask the painter to show you some, and you will learn quickly.
- Outlines
- Crisp under a magnifying glass
- Colour
- Depth, not a flat sheen
- Gold
- Burnished, not gold ink
- Antiques
- Over 100 years old need permission to export
- Best buy
- Signed, dated contemporary work
- Fake antiques: many new paintings are made on old paper, sometimes torn from ledgers, and aged deliberately.
- The law: genuine antiquities are rare and expensive, and India does not allow objects more than a hundred years old to leave without official permission.
- Our advice: buy fine contemporary work from living painters, signed and dated. It keeps the tradition alive and causes no trouble at customs.
- No commissions: we never take one from any painter or shop, and never take guests to showrooms that pay drivers to bring them.
- No pressure: if you love something, buy it. If not, a warm thank-you and a cup of tea are enough.
- Read more: our shopping guide, and our textile and craft trail, built around the makers.
A morning lesson, hour by hour
Grinding: the painter gives you pigment, a flat stone and a little water, and shows you how to grind in slow circles until it is as smooth as cream.
The brush: how one is made, and how to hold it almost upright, with your little finger resting on the paper for balance.
- Allow
- A morning
- First
- Grinding pigment on a stone
- Subjects
- Elephant, peacock, lotus or horse
- Ages
- Adults and children from about ten
- You leave with
- A painting half yours, half his
- Tracing: most guests start with a simple outline from one of the painter's own drawings.
- Layer by layer: you fill in colour and learn why patience matters: a thick coat cracks, a thin one glows.
- The eye: the painter usually steps in to add it, the hardest stroke of all.
- Afterwards: a far deeper respect for every miniature you see.
- Younger children: they enjoy grinding colours and watching more than painting.
Manners in a painter's studio
Shoes and seats: take your shoes off if the family does, and sit where you are invited, often on a mat or low cushion.
Never touch work in progress: wet colour smudges, and burnished surfaces mark with the oil from a fingertip.
- Ask before photographs: of the painter, the family or unfinished work. Some painters prefer their designs aren't photographed before they are sold.
- Accept tea: and take time over it. The conversation is part of the visit.
- No obligation: we pay the painter for his time whether or not you buy, so you can enjoy the visit without pressure.
- If you buy: ask the painter to sign and date the work, and write a few words about the subject on the back.
When to come, and what to pair it with
Any month: the work happens indoors.
October to March: the most comfortable time to combine painting with palaces and lakes.
- The monsoon: Bundi and Udaipur are at their most beautiful, and the Chitrashala's painted storms make sense as real clouds roll over Taragarh.
- The hot months: a studio is one of the best ways to spend the middle of the day.
- Other painted things: the frescoed merchant houses of Shekhawati on our painted havelis page, the pichwai painters of Nathdwara, or block printing in Bagru.
- The Kishangarh love story: add the chhatris of Nagari Das and Bani Thani at Vrindavan, in Mathura and Vrindavan, on your way to Agra.
Who will love it
Watchers of skilled hands: anyone who enjoys them will love a studio visit.
Art lovers and collectors: the conversations with painters are as rewarding as the museums.
- Makers: a lesson suits patient people who like to make things.
- Couples: often book together and compare elephants afterwards.
- Families: older children do well, especially if the visit is short and they can grind colours.
- Limited mobility: a studio is easy, though many painters sit on the floor, so tell us and we ask for a chair and a table.
- In a hurry: less suited. A rushed visit turns into a sales pitch, and a lesson needs a morning.
- Short on time: see the collections at Udaipur or Mehrangarh with a good guide, and save the studio for a slower stay. Our Mewar region guide shows how painting fits a slow week around Udaipur.