Pahari Paintings

A Brief Introduction to Pahari Painting

The modern Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal once comprised the group of small Rajput states which possessed the means and the genius to create some of the greatest of Indian paintings, in the seventeenth, eighteenth and the first years of the nineteenth centuries. Portraiture was always of importance for those Rajas who supported the arts, but so also was the illustration of manuscripts, whether of sacred or poetic texts that allowed the artist to express the emotions or rasas that underlay Indian painting.

Click here to continue reading this extract from J.P. Losty’s essay first published in Paintings for the Pahari Rajas, Francesca Galloway, 2020.
Works in Focus
Maharao Durjan Sal of Kota (1723-56) hunting bear
Kota, c. 1750
48 x 108 cm, black and red line with wash and white pigment for correction on paper

From the Paul Walter Collection

This important, large scale panoramic scene, depicts Maharao Durjan Sal of Kota (1723-56) on a hunting platform shooting bear, which appear to have been freed from the pen. In this immensely lively drawing Durjan Sal and his attendant form the almost still centre while all around are scenes of intense activity. The shooting party is taking place on the rocky shore of the Chambal river. The bears are being driven by men blowing horns and waving weapons up into the rocks where they form targets for the Maharao in his tree. Other men on the other side of the drawing drive the bears down. One of the bears has been shot and is shown several times falling down the rocks in a delayed action sequence.
Hunting pictures of this sort were immensely popular in Kota royal circles. Many exist as finished paintings and even more as drawings. See Welch et al 1997 in particular as well as his other publications in which the art of drawing in Kota figures prominently. Jagdish Mittal's collection likewise has many Kota drawings (Topsfield and Mittal 2015). However, outside the Kota palace and Stuart Cary Welch's collection, now at Harvard, Kota drawings of this calibre rarely appear on the market.
Durjan Sal himself was responsible for large numbers of hunting pictures, often showing him with his queens in grand hunts; his fame as a hunter continued for several reigns, such as in the important posthumous painting in the V&A Museum dated 1778 (Archer 1959, pl. 41). For Durjan Sal and his love of hunting, see Joachim Bautze's essay in Welch et al. 1997, pp. 48-49.
Parrot from Bussorah: Loor Totah
Calcutta, by an Indian artist for a British patron, c. 1795-1815
38.4 x 30.8 cm
Opaque pigments and pen on Whatman paper

Inscribed 'Parrot from Bussorah' in ink and lower right 'Loor Totah'

In the 18th and 19th century, Bussorah (modern day Basra, Iraq) was a major trading-port, making it a likely origin for exotic pets including parrots, coming from other parts of the world. Our parrot is a yellow-headed amazon (Amazona oratria) with vivid green body and flecks of red and yellow in its wings. 'Tota' is a common term for parrot in Hindi and 'Lorro' often refers to the parrot's chatter. These birds are renowned for their exceptional talking and singing abilities. Known as 'one-person birds' they can become very attached to a single owner, they are popular but they require a lot of attention. Such birds were often kept as pets.
This yellow-headed amazon is tied to his wooden perch and is one of 9 parrots and parakeets in an album of 49 Indian watercolours of domestic and wild birds formed by a natural history enthusiast, or even a collector of birds, based in Bengal around 1800. Each bird is inscribed in English and in Hindi and whilst some of them are indigenous to India others come from other parts of the world including the Amazon and the Philippines. The anonymous album was originally dispersed by Charles Ewart in 1970.
There were a number of keen British natural history enthusiasts stationed in India, mainly in Calcutta, in the late 18th to 19th century. Many patrons commissioned local artists to record the flora and fauna of their estates including their menagerie and their aviary. One of the most extensive collections, now in the British Library, was assembled by Marquis Wellesley (1760-1842) while he was Governor General of Fort William (Calcutta) from 1798-1805.

Provenance

Private collection, New York (1987-2025)
Acquired from Niall Hobhouse in 1987
With Charles Ewart, London, in 1970

Published

Forty-nine watercolour drawings of birds, Charles Ewart, catalogue 1, London, 1970, no. 25
Large Textile depicting a Scene from the Ramayana
India, Coromandel Coast for the Indonesian market, late 18th century
100 x 480 cm; cotton, hand-drawn and mordant-dyed

This large and impressive textile depicts a scene from the Hindu epic the Ramayana. The story narrates the life of Rama, the 7th avatar of the Hindu deity Vishnu.

Here, the story's hero Rama battles Ravana, the ten-headed demon king of Lanka and his enemy. He is supported by his brother Lakshmana and the monkey army led by Hanuman, the son of Vayu, the god of wind, whilst Ravana has the backing of the demons. In this energetic depiction, arrows, limbs and heads fly as the battle rages for days. Rama finally shoots Ravana with the divine arrow of Brahma.

The cotton mordant-dyed technique involved applying dyes directly onto the cotton. The prevailing colours are variations of red and dark brown with vestiges of indigo. Although related in technique and style to south Indian temple cloths, these Ramayana hangings were produced on the Coromandel coast for export to Indonesia. They have been mostly recorded in Sulawesi and Bali. Some bear the stamp of the VOC, the initials of the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie). This indicates that they were manufactured pre-1800 as the trading Company went into liquidation in 1799.

Comparable examples

Other comparable examples are in The Museum of Fine Arts Houston (inv. 2024.444), the Art Gallery of New South Wales (inv. 169.2005), The Victoria and Albert Museum (inv. IS.23-1996), ROM Toronto (inv. 2016.42.2), The TAPI collection (inv. 01.183) and the British Museum (inv. 1995,1110,0.1). A small fragment is in the ACM Singapore (inv. 2009-01850, formerly in the Hollander Collection). There is a slightly different version of the same scene in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 2008.163).