Paintings, Drawings, and Photographs from Pahari India

In the far north of India, the Himalayan mountain ranges rise abruptly from the Punjab plains to form the setting for an alpine region known as Pahari, defined by a shared language (Pahari) and script (Takri). From the 1600s to1800s, the Hindu nobility of the Pahari kingdoms commissioned paintings for their royal collections. Known as “Pahari paintings,” they were made by painters who were born into hereditary artist communities located in villages throughout the region.  

Members of the region’s ruling elite classes commissioned and collected Pahari paintings and often gifted and re-gifted them to one another. The popularity of musical and poetical themes invoking heroines and their love affairs speaks to the Pahari elite’s appreciation for visual, literary, and performing arts. Paintings depicting sacred subjects, such as scenes from the life of the Hindu god Krishna, reveal their piety.  

Many Pahari artists worked for multiple royal patrons, often in kingdoms other than where their family workshops were located. Before completing a painting, which involved time-consuming preparations of expensive pigments, artists created multiple preparatory sketches and careful underdrawings. Most Pahari painters appear to have been men, while women worked in textile media, such as the distinctive double-sided embroideries known as rumal.  

By the mid-1800s, dramatic Pahari landscapes became favorite subjects for photographers. Photographic albums of distant places in the British Empire appealed to colonial collectors who thrilled at seeing breathtaking vistas. Some Pahari rulers also began to commission photographic portraits instead of paintings, signaling a shift to a new era.