Hinduism - What Is The Pahari Style Of Indian Painting?

 


One of India's two major "schools" of miniature painting, the other being Rajasthani.

Because the Basohli paintings belong to the Pahari school, but are artistically closer to those of Rajasthan than to the later Pahari style, the boundaries between schools are geographical and hence rather arbitrary.

The Pahari style thrived in the Shiwalik Hills north and west of Delhi throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

It initially appears in the kingdom of Basohli, where the Rajasthani school's influence is most obvious, and then spread to the kingdoms of Jammu, Guler, Garhwal, and Kangra.

The evolved Pahari style differs from the Rajasthani in that it emphasizes more linear drawing—perhaps influenced by European art—and a more restrained use of color, all of which contribute to a more lyrical mood to the paintings.

W. G. Archer, Indian Painting, 1957; and "Pahari Miniatures: A Concise History," Marg, Vol. 28, No. 2, 1975, for further details.

~Kiran Atma


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