Pahari Painting

Pahari painting, style of miniature painting and book illustration that developed in the independent states of the Himalayan foothills in India. The style is made up of two markedly contrasting schools, the bold intense Basohli and the delicate and lyrical Kangra. Pahari painting—sometimes referred to as Hill painting (pahārī, “of the hills”)—is closely related in conception and feeling to Rājasthanī painting and shares with the Rājput art of the North Indian plains a preference for depicting legends of the cowherd god Krishna.

The earliest known paintings in the hills (c. 1690) are in the Basohli idiom, a style that continued at numerous centres until about mid-18th century. Its place was taken by a transitional style sometimes referred to as pre-Kangra, which lasted from about 1740 to 1775. During the mid-18th century, a number of artist families trained in the late Mughal style apparently fled Delhi for the hills in search of new patrons and more settled living conditions. The influence of late Mughal art is evident in the new Kangra style, which appears as a complete rejection of the Basohli school. Colours are less intense, the treatment of landscape and perspective is generally more naturalistic, and the line is more refined and delicate.

By 1770 the lyrical charm of the Kangra school was fully developed. It reached its peak during the early years of the reign of one of its important patrons, Rājā Sansār Chand (1775–1823).

The school was not confined to the Kangra state but ranged over the entire Himalayan foothill area, with many distinctive idioms. As the independent states in the foothills were small and often very close to each other, it is difficult to assign a definitive provenance to much of the painting.

The life and loves of Krishna as expressed in the poetic works the Bhāgavata-Purāṇa and the Gītagovinda make up the commonest theme of the paintings, together with other Hindu myths, hero-heroine and rāgamālā (musical modes) series, and portraits of hill chiefs and their families. After 1800 the school began to decline, though painting of inferior quality continued to be done through the remainder of the 19th century.