Indian Art — The Pahari Styles of Painting
The Pahari painting style emerged from India among the Himalayas. Pahari means painting created in the hills, and the style was aptly named because landscape themes (mostly hills) are very prominent in its art. Influenced by the Basohli and Mughal styles of ancient northern Indian art, the Pahari painting style is identifiable by its melange of bold and mild colours, natural and mythical themes, and delicate brush strokes. The paintings would also depict moving objects, each independently making the painting vivid and realistic.
There are two schools of the Pahari painting style — the Basohli and the Kangra schools- named according to the locations in which they were created. The Basohli school is an art style that uses loud colours and hard lines to create paintings in oblong shapes. The painter must pay attention to detail, and the painting’s subjects and objects usually have a red border to make them more noticeable.
The Basohli school uses brush strokes to create a streamlined face with exaggerated features, with a noticeable single eye. The landscape is often green, and a common technique of Basohli painters is to give their human subjects in the painting bulky jewellery constructed with white and green flecks of beetle wings to depict diamonds and emeralds.
In the mid-18th century, the Basohli school lost predominance in the Indian art sphere and gave way to the Kangra school of painting. Unlike the Basohli school, Kangra-style painters preferred less emphatic colours while painting. The art school was started by a family of refugees from Guler, who were granted protection and shelter by the ruling monarch, Raja Dalip Singh. These painters were the first to connect love to spirituality in their paintings, and they borrowed the hill painting structure from the local artists in the region (Basohli school).
The dominant theme in the Kangra art style was love because the Indian culture during that period postulated love should be celebrated in all forms because they (Indians) believed in its spiritual superiority. The love story of Radha and Krishna, especially paintings where Krishna (a beautiful god) dances and attracts the eye of every female) was a common representation of the love theme in Kangra paintings. Painters also created Kangra paintings using love poems from Jayadeva, a famous poet in ancient India.
Verdant green was a colour favoured by most Kangra-style painters when painting greenery. This is because the colour was vivid without being loud. The painting also contains trees and foliage, and the painters make the trees look real by depicting them with multiple shades of green, unlike the Basohli art style, which uses one shade for each element in its paintings.
Painters often create the scenery in Kangra-style paintings with a delicate mix of hues made from primary colours. This gives the paintings a soft look and perspective. They also depict the feminine figure very beautifully and gracefully.
In the latter years of its development, the Kangra school of art also included stormy settings filled with lightning. The painters create their colours out of vegetable and mineral extracts, making them look cool and less vibrant.
