Indian Art History and Traditional Art Forms
Indian art history questions ask you to place a work in period, region and material, and to recognise style from described features. Learn the verbal fingerprints rather than the pictures.
Periods and fingerprints
- Indus Valley - steatite seals with script and animals; the bronze Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-daro, cast by the lost-wax method.
- Mauryan - mirror-polished Chunar sandstone; the Didarganj Yakshi, found near Patna in 1917, a chauri-bearer; the Sarnath lion capital.
- Gupta–Vakataka - the Ajanta murals (29 caves, Buddhist): Padmapani, Mahajanaka Jataka; modelled figures without hard outline.
- Mughal miniature - Akbar's atelier (Basawan, Daswanth), Jahangir's naturalism (Ustad Mansur's birds, Abul Hasan), gold-flecked borders, profile portraits.
- Rajasthani and Pahari - flat brilliant colour, Krishna themes; Kishangarh's Bani Thani, Kangra's lyrical line.
- Bengal School - Abanindranath Tagore's wash technique and Bharat Mata (1905), a swadeshi answer to Ravi Varma's oils.
Worked example
"A watercolour shows a four-armed goddess, calm and haloed, painted in thin washes with a soft, medievalising Indian mood." Which movement? Answer: the Bengal School, essentially Abanindranath's Bharat Mata. Reasoning: washes plus an icon-like, deliberately Indian figure type identify it. Oils with mythological realism point to Ravi Varma; flat bright colour with lotus margins points to a Rajput or Pahari miniature.
Traps
- Calling the Dancing Girl stone - it is bronze.
- Mixing Ajanta (Buddhist painting) with Ellora (Buddhist, Hindu and Jain, largely sculpture).
- Labelling every miniature "Mughal" when the flat colour is Rajput.