Marwar is the historic name for the large area of western Rajasthan that includes much of the formidable Thar desert . At their capital in Jodhpur, the Rathor clan of the Rajputs, who ruled Marwar, developed a strikingly individual style of painting which was interpreted in a host of different ways by local artists in the many small fiefdoms (thikanas) that were the ancestral lands of the Rathor nobility.Artists trained at the court of the Mughal emperors brought sophisticated concepts of portraiture and composition to Jodhpur in the 17th and 18th centuries, and these ideas were combined with distinctive local styles and bold colours to form a unique and lively school of painting," reads the leaf of the book Marwar Paintings: A History of the Jodhpur Style written by Rosemary Crill, to be officially released on Wednesday. Maharaja Gaj Singh II will inaugurate an exhibition of miniature Marwar paintings - the first ever public viewing of the Jodhpur royal collection - the same day. Based on the workcarried out by the author at the Mehrangarh Museum in Jodhpur, from November 1985 to May 1986, Crill came across several hundred paintings, most of which were still stored in a traditional manner - wrapped up in cloth bundles. This sparked off a desire to chronicle this little-known school of Rajasthani painting. Replete with historical references and events (in the form of text and family trees) that shaped this art form, the book takes the lay person on a guided tour through a hitherto unexplored visual past. Beginning with the introduction of the book: "The subject matter of paintings in Marwar run into two separate but parallel streams. The earliest paintings known from this region, and indeed from Hindu Rajasthan in general, are illustrations to ragamalas depicting the various anthropomorphised musical modes, or they illustrate folk tales or religious texts. Ragamala sets, stories such as Dhola Maru and religious subjects such as the Bhagavata Purana did not cease to be produced until the mid-19thcentury. They followed the changing style of the courtly paintings, and indeed were carried out by the same artists who were responsible for the second `stream', that of portraiture and depiction of court life. This trend for documentary painting started in Jodhpur under Maharaja Jaswant Singh I in about 1640, and continued in an unbroken stream until photography, the equivalent modern medium for recording events, took over in the late 19th century under Jaswant Singh II."Divided into five chapters, the book is richly illustrated with both text and visuals. The deputy curator of the Indian and South-East Asian department at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, has used her experience with display - along with photographer Bharath Ramamrutham - to create a coffee table book that is a veritable walk through an era gone by.The Royal Collection of Paintings from Marwar, Jodhpur, at the Coomaraswamy Hall, Prince of Wales Museum, M G Road. From Nov 4 to Nov 17. Time: 10.15 am to 6.00 pm.
