The other day, watching a beautiful Odissi performance by Sharon Lowen triggered off a thought that what would classical Indian dance and theatre be without the Natyashastra? The treatise by Bharat Muni has not only codified the basic format of the classical performing arts, but contextualised them and given them a direction to go forward. Not every book has the scholarship or the luck to become the last word on any art form, but every author for their part try to be as complete as possible.
The one major lacuna that Indian classical visual arts suffer from is the lack of printed material that contextualises it and puts it on the international art map. Publications are far and few and not all have the scholarship or writing style that is of international standing. Publishers are chary of spending on lavish publications with limited audiences. Such a pity! Contrary to popular notion, no author hopes to become rich on a book. It is essentially a labour of love. It takes years for a serious book to come from an author’s table and no royalty can ever hope to compensate. Two wonderfully produced major publications that have the ability to be part of this exclusive and elite group of classic works have come from Niyogi Books: Pahari Masters, Court Painters Of Northern India and Nainsukh of Guler, A Great Indian Painter From A Small Hill State.
Nainsukh is by B.N. Goswamy and Pahari Masters too is by B.N. Goswamy and Eberhard Fischer, both scholars of no mean repute internationally. Prof Goswamy is a distinguished art historian with many major publications and is also a curator of many exhibitions in Europe and United States. Dr Fischer is known as well for his deep interest in Indian art and craft traditions and has done some wonderful exhibitions in Switzerland and Austria. I have fond memories of meeting him in the Rietberg Museum in Zurich, where he was the director until recently. He was rightly proud of the Indian classical art at the Rietberg and had pointed out some very interesting collections of Indian art around Switzerland, when I was working on a publication on the subject.
Their joint publication, Pahari Masters, is definitely a pioneering work of great significance and has been published in German as well. The publication has achieved cult status as on this depends how this form of Indian classical painting will be perceived for a long time to come. The authors have chosen 14 Pahari Masters, whose work spans 300 years and have been chosen from 20 different museums and private collections. The detailed essays on these painters dispel the notion that these artists were an indeterminate, anonymous group of craftsmen, but were actually thinking artists who had a commendable range. Lavishly illustrated, the style of writing is a charming bridge between providing scholarly details in a readable manner. I must say the essays are a delight to read and recount many fables with interesting details.
The other book, Nainsukh Of Guler, is virtually poetic in its style of writing. The author has delved deep and traces the journey of one painter, Nainsukh, born in 1710 to a family of painters in Guler, a small and little-known state in Himachal Pradesh attached himself for a large part of his career to little-known principality of Jasrota. The prince of the small hill state, Balwant Singh was an enthusiastic patron and a true connoisseur. Prof Goswamy has brought together all of Nainsukh’s ascribable oeuvre, close to a hundred paintings, painted sketches, and drawings that is startling in its freshness and heart-warming in its humanity. As the author says, “To trace the life and career of a painter of the past in India is somewhat akin to following the course of an earthen lamp on swift waters.” Prof Goswamy has done exactly that, and the glow of the book lingers like the soft twinkle of a lit diya long after one has shut the covers.
Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist