Painting
The earliest Indian paintings were the rock paintings of pre-historic times, the petroglyphs as found in places like Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka, and some of them are older than 5500 BC. Such works continued and after several millennia, in the 7th century, carved pillars of Ellora, Maharashtra state present a fine example of Indian paintings, and the colors, mostly various shades of red and orange, were derived from minerals. Thereafter, frescoes of Ajanta and Ellora caves appeared. India's Buddhist literature is replete with examples of texts which describe that palaces of kings and aristocratic class were embellished with paintings, but they have not survived. But, it is believed that some form of art painting was practiced in that time.
Indian Art was given a new lease of life by the British in early 19th century when the new government required painters to document Indian life and times. The English School paintings, as these new art were called had seen the emergence of India's greatest artists of all times Raja Ravi Verma. Other important artists of the Colonial period include Jamini Roy, Amrita Shergil, Ramkinker Baij and Rabindranath Tagore. After independence, Indian art became more diverse and artists like Maqbool Fida Hussain, Francis Newton Souza, Subodh Gupta, Devajyoti Ray, Paresh Maity and Bose Krishnamachari earned international recognition.
- Indian art, ancient and medieval
Read more about this topic: Arts And Entertainment In India
Famous quotes containing the word painting:
“If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this: in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; to paint the man, in short, as well as his features.”
—James Mcneill Whistler (1834–1903)
“When I am finishing a picture I hold some God-made object up to it—a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand—as a kind of final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there’s a clash between the two, it is bad art.”
—Marc Chagall (1889–1985)
“Painting gives the object itself; poetry what it implies. Painting embodies what a thing contains in itself; poetry suggests what exists out of it, in any manner connected with it.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)