Kishangarh Painting

During the first decades of the eighteenth century, the city of Kishangarh itself served as the court for the sultanate of Sāvant Singh (b. 1699), who reigned from 1748 until his death in 1764. The Kishangarh school of painting was greatly influenced by Singh’s long obsession with a beautiful, mysterious courtesan who was his muse for more than twenty years. She is known to art historians only as Bani Thani, Hindi for the "bejeweled one." Singh’s court artisans, most notably Nihal Chand (1710–1782), fashioned dozens of miniatures bearing her likeness—and those images, at once deeply erotic and profoundly spiritual, epitomized Kishangarh painting.

Background

During the late eighteenth century, the massive Indian subcontinent, after centuries of occupation by Persian, Mughal, and Chinese military invaders, was divided into several kingdoms, each with its own maharajah (or king) and each asserting its own cultural identity. The Kishangarh school of painting developed in the state of Rājasthān, then as now the largest state in India, dominating most of northern India. Sāvant Singh himself was a poet of some renown as well as an accomplished musician. His devotion to painting and to music created a court in which the arts flourished.

Singh’s fascination with Bani Thani was infused with his deep religiosity—his Hindu faith defined and informed his infatuation. The courtesan was reputedly gifted as both a musician and a poet, and she became for the smitten ruler more than a mistress. Within the Hindi faith, she became for Singh Radha, the mythic goddess-consort and lover of Krishna, an avatar of the Lord Vishnu. Theirs was, within Indian mythology and tradition, a love supreme, beyond the simple attractions and satisfactions of carnal love. It was a love both physical and mystical. Indeed, Radha was the very embodiment of idealized Indian femininity, at once beautiful and intelligent, sensuous and sensitive, passionate and enlightened.

During the nearly two decades of Singh’s reign, he commissioned dozens of art works, many of them within the long Indian tradition of miniatures but also some elaborate and elegant murals designed to decorate the walls of his kingdom’s forts and of his own palaces. He commissioned illuminated manuscripts (particularly of the sprawling Indian epic Ramayana), as well as works in ivory, wooden tablets, leather, and textiles. But the Kishangarh school is known primarily for the works that captured the haunting beauty of Bani Thani herself. Indeed, the influence of Singh’s singular obsession informed court painting in Kishangarh in the years following his death—indeed, some of the most striking paintings were completed in the decade after his death.

The Kishangarh school largely ended by the early nineteenth century, but the image of Bani Thani has become an Indian treasure. Indeed, like da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, the paintings of Bani Thani have become something of a defining cultural icon. Her image, most often in profile, with its distinctive elongated features, her sharp nose and acuminated chin, and deep-set oval eyes, has come to embody not only the art of the era but also the quintessential concept of feminine beauty in India. Paintings of her have appeared on postage stamps and tourism promotional material as well as on lavish art posters; her image has been reproduced on t-shirts and dinner plates, coffee mugs and purses; pricey weddings packages are themed around the story of Singh and Bani Thani. She has become, in short, a marketing bonanza for the tourism industry itself.

Impact

The images that Singh commissioned render Bani Thani with undeniable religious depth, drawing on signature elements of centuries of traditions associated with images of Vishnu and his lover Radha. Bani Thani’s image is striking, her features at once individual and iconic, bedecked with layers of ornate jewelry. The images painstakingly rendered—the coloring, with its distinctive green shadings, was a result of months of careful mixing and blending vegetable and plant oils with the ground mineral dust of jewels, silver, and gold. The rich detail of the images was achieved through careful and fine brushstrokes. Singh himself designed brushes crafted from filament-thin squirrel hairs to achieve the effect.

The signature works of Kishangarh paintings, however, are not limited to the portraits of Bani Thani. Lush and detailed paintings of court life also exemplify the school. The Kishangarh paintings used deep backdrops, and, within a long Indian tradition that most often focused on the dominant image itself, the Kishangarh artists extended the range of the image by providing panoramic background landscapes of turquoise lakes or terraced gardens or hills with bending trees or magnificent marbled palace chambers. Indeed, signature works from the era captured the elegance and luxury of court life with paintings teeming with animation. Carefully detailed naturalistic and idealized figures engage in dancing, hunting, playing musical instruments, dining, praying, or boating. It is the image of Bani Thani, however, that has come to define Kishangarh painting.

Bibliography

Chakraverty, Anjar. Indian Miniature Painting. New Delhi, India: Roli, 1996. Print.

Cummins, Joan. Indian Painting. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 2006. Print.

Daljeet, Dr. and P. C. Jain. Indian Miniature Painting: Manifestation of a Creative Mind. Noida: Brijbasi Art P, 2007. Print.

Kossak, Steven. Indian Court Painting, 16th–19th Century. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art P, 1997. Print.

Singh, Mohinder, and Doris Schreier Randhawa Randhawa. Kishangarh Painting. Mumbai: Vakils, 1980. Print.

Topsfield, Andrew, ed. In the Realm of Gods and Kings: Arts of India. Rev. ed. London, Wilson, 2014. Print.