Malwa and Mewar

Malwa painting (about 1600-1700) carried on the flat, two-dimensional style of Jain and Chaurpanchashika painting. It spread over a wide area of Central India with no fixed centre. Examples: the Amaru Shataka (1652), and Raga Megha by Madho Das (1680). Many Malwa works were found in the Datia Palace, probably bought from travelling artists. Its Bhagavata Purana pages divide the space into sections, each telling part of the story of Krishna's birth.

Mewar's early paintings were lost in its wars with the Mughals. Its school is dated from a Ragamala painted at Chawand in 1605 by Nisardin, as its colophon records.

Under Jagat Singh I (1628-1652), the style was renewed by Sahibdin (a Ragamala in 1628, the Rasikapriya, a Bhagavata Purana in 1648, and the Yuddha Kanda of the Ramayana in 1652) and by Manohar (the Bal Kanda, 1649). Later, Jagannath painted the Bihari Satsai (1719).

Sahibdin's Yuddha Kanda uses an oblique aerial view (as if seen from above at an angle) and puts several episodes in one painting. His Maru Ragini carries an inscription, 'samvat 1685... chitara Sahivdin', which dates it to 1628; it calls painting 'likhitam', written.

Mewar loves bright reds and yellows. In the eighteenth century it turned to court life and portraits, like Jagat Singh II out hawking. At Nathdwara, artists painted pichhwais: large cloth backdrops hung behind the image of Shrinathji (Krishna).