Niyogi Books - Pahari Masters

Pahari Masters

Court Painters of Northern India

Paper Type: Art Paper (Matt) | Size: 292 x 229mm
All colour; 306 photographs

Art

2500 | 85 | 45

Pahari painting – ‘Painting from the Hills’, often subsumed under the broad head, Rajput Painting – has long been acknowledged as one of the great achievements of India in the realm of art. For too long, however, the Pahari painter, the maker of these images, has continued to be seen as belonging to an indeterminate, anonymous group of craftsmen who simply plied predetermined brushes. The present work is aimed at challenging that notion, for it presents the painter as a thinking man, faced with, and capable of, exercising choices. It was time that the ‘long winter of neglect’ in which he had been left by history came to an end. The authors draw attention here to fourteen Pahari Masters, whose work spans a period of three hundred years. The paintings come from as many as twenty different museums and private collections, the effort being to select such works as illumine each master’s range as also the processes of thought from which his art is likely to have sprung. Carefully, the essay on each master presents the evidence available on him, the known extent of his work, and an analysis of his style. Pahari Masters is a pioneering work of great significance. When first published in German, it was widely acclaimed as ‘a great work’, and has come since to occupy the status of a classic, laying down the lines along which the future of studies in Indian painting is likely to proceed

B. N. Goswamy

Author

B.N. Goswamy, distinguished art historian, is Professor Emeritus of Art History at the Panjab University, Chandigarh. His work covers a wide range and is regarded, especially in the area of Indian painting, as having influenced much thinking. He has been the recipient of many honors, including the Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship, the Rietberg Award for Outstanding Research in Art History, the JDR III Fellowship, the Mellon Senior Fellowship and, from the President of India, the Padma Shri (1998) and the Padma Bhushan (2008). Apart from the Panjab University, Professor Goswamy has taught, as Visiting Professor, at major universities across the world and has been responsible for significant exhibitions of Indian art at international venues, including Paris, San Francisco, Zurich, New Delhi, San Diego and New York. He is the author of over 25 books on Indian art and culture, including: Pahari Painting; the Family as the Basis of Style (Mumbai, 1968); Painters at the Sikh Court (Wiesbaden,1975); A Place Apart: Paintings from Kutch (with A.L. Dallapiccola; New Delhi,1983); The Essence of Indian Art (San Francisco,1986); Wonders of a Golden Age: Painting at the Courts of the Great Mughals (with E. Fischer; Zurich,1987); Pahari Masters: Court Painters of Northern India (with E. Fischer; Zurich,1992); Indian Costumes in the Calico Museum of Textiles (Ahmedabad,1993); Nainsukh of Guler: A great Indian Painter from a small Hill State (Zurich and New Delhi, 1997); Domains of Wonder: Selected Masterworks of Indian Painting (with C. Smith; San Diego, 2005); And, more recently, the Spirit of Indian Painting: Close Encounters with 101 Great Works (New Delhi and London, 2014, 2016) and Pahari Paintings – the Horst Metzger Collection in the Museum Rietberg (with E. Fischer; Zurich and New Delhi).

Eberhard Fischer

Author

Eberhard Fischer is an art historian and cultural anthropologist. Till recently he was the Director of the Museum Rietberg Zurich. Dinanath Pathy is a practising contemporary painter, art historian and creative writer. He has significantly researched into the pictorial art traditions of Orissa, its traditional and contemporary nuances, has published extensively, designed and curated international exhibitions.