Folk Paintings of India

Folk paintings of India has enriched our art heritage land civilization. A great merit of this feature is that it relates the folk paintings to the traditions and settings of the people who made them, where history, sociology and geography meet in a fruitful alliance. The architectural wonders of Orissa appears in the "pats" of Lord Jagannath: The ceremonial temper of Banaras is obvious in the paintings on the walls of its houses. The art of Rajasthan grew out of princely, warlike and chivalrous traditions. Gujrat a businesslike is approprately displayed by ‘Market scene’ in their folk paintings. In paintings from the Buddhist areas of North-East Frontier we see the fantastic imagination of people who live among great mountains and the vast forces of nature.

In colourful Bengal, the folk artist seems to have sought relief in sober subdued tones: in bare and arid Rajasthan he found contrast in exciting colour. The Himalayan painters liked soft, powdery shades. The Santal folk paintings are bright and simple, well adapted to their purpose, to cheer up their cottages.

Folk painting depends, of course, to some extent on the availability of appropriate materials. In Uttar Pradesh the smooth white-washed walls have provided a large canvas. In the Saora hills of Orissa the walls are washed with a red clay, and the paintings therefore are done on this in white and black. In Assam, the walls of village houses are generally of cane or bamboo, so wall painting is not found there; instead a tradition of painting on pith came into being, and there are paintings on leataher, on stiffened newspaper, on pottery or cloth.

Buddhist religious serolls are fairly common in Sikkim, Arunachal and other places in the North-Eastern states, specially in the Monpa country. Dragon painted on wood is a representative example of Monpa art: the theme is a traditional Buddhist one.

‘Manasa – Mangal’ is a favourite theme – ‘Manasa’, apparently the deity of the snakes, is the central figure with a whole host of subsidiary characters thrown in. The lines are bold and colours used on pith soak into the surface to give it an overall soft tone which is the special charm of paintings on pith. It is a unique folk art of Bengal.

In Bengal, paintings as a popular medium of cultural expression developed in comparative idependence from the conventions of temple art, and free from the influence of the royal court. In the painted scrolls and ‘pats’ of rural Bengal we have, in fact, one of the genuine folk traditions surviving down to the present century. In the villages of 24-Parganas, Bankura, Birbhum, Burdwan and Midnapore, one still meets the ‘patuas’ selling their ‘pats’ in village fairs. Painted usually on paper of the cheapest variety-sometimes even on old newspapers - the ‘jarano pats’ average twelve to fifteen feet in length and are one or two feet wide. Apart from pupular mythological stories, the theme sometimes is a condemnation of social injustice. Primary colours – yellow, red and blue - are generally used by the ‘patua’; sometimes also green and brown, all laid in flat washes.

The line drawing asserts its claims as a powerful medium of expression in the works of the folk artists from Kalighat who originally produced their paintings for mass sale to pilgrims thronging the Kali temple. The 18th and the 19th centuries were the golden age of Kalighat artist, the entire family participated in the execution of a painting: even the ladies were as dexterous as the men.

The Kalighat ‘patua’ worked on religious subjects; later, antagonized by growing influence of the Western artists, they made their art as powerful instrument of satire, to mock at Wersternization.

Celebrated painter Jamini Roy(1887-1972) expressed his views on ‘Kalighat pats’ : " A wrong notion prevails about what is patua-art. Many a one is inclined to identify it with the Kalighat-pats. Not that there is no truth whatsoever in such an idea, but the truth has really a very slender basis. During the early days of the growth of Calcutta as a city, a group of village craftsmen came to settle in Kalighat and went on with their paintings. They were essentially rustic artists: certain changes in their traditional work were, however, inevitable because of their contact with the urban life. They had to cater to urban taste and had their market in the city."

To Puri for centuries have flocked pilgrims from every corner of India, and they had to take back home a suitable memento – a Jagannatha ‘pat’ was the obvious choice, some time the pilgrim also buys playing cards and other pats of other familiar objects. These ‘pats’ were supplied by the Maharajas’, hereditary ‘Chitrakaras’(artists) who lived as some of them still do – close to the temple precincts.

Mithila is roughly the area covered by the districts of Darbhanga and Muzaffarpur, parts of Mongher, Bhagalpur and Saharsa. ‘Maithili’ is a distinct literary language and Mithila has an artistic tradition of its own as represented by the paintings done on mud-walls by its village women. Other women artists do same kind of artistic theme on thick paper and even on cloth. Some folk artists of Bihar also creates a variety of paintings which is called ‘ Madhubani’ arts.

‘Pahari’ paintings of Himachal Pradesh developed rapidly at the end of the 18th century and it was purely a princely art. The ‘Pahari’ painter drew his inspiration from the mythological legends as well as popular folk stories.

Folk paintings in Rajasthan developed primarily under feudal patronage. But there were also many anonymous painters who painted for a distinctly plebeian clientele.

In Gujrat, the Jain community played a very important role in the development of art, including painting. The tradition that had grown up over the ages in Gujrat was that the noble and the moneyed classes should establish libraries – Jain ‘Gyana Bharati’, they also commissioned artists to produce illuminated versions of the Jain sacred texts for those libraries.

‘Paithan’ which was known as ‘Pratisthana’ in the Godavari plateau in Deccan, in the 17th century it was also the home of a peculiar folk style of painting, with remarkable originality and boldness of brush-work.

The South had a tradition of temple murals executed by great rulers, of paintings in ‘Bhajanalayas’. Paintings of gods and goddesses on the small shrines of Tamilnadu and on the temple floors in Kerala done actually with coloured powders, have some of the vitality of folk paintings. But the flat leather cut-outs used for shadow plays in Andhra and Mysore are gorgeoulsy painted affairs of the exquisite craftsmanship. The simple themes of the shadow play, from the epics, have delighted the masses for centuries in south India.