NORTH INDIA, PUNJAB HILLS, KANGRA, MID-19TH CENTURY

In the mid-eighteenth century, as Northern India was shaken by the invasion of Nadir Shah (1739) and the subsequent incursions by Ahmad Shah Abdali, a unlikely development in the arts took place in the Punjab Hills. Under the patronage of Raja Govardhan Chand (b. 1744 – d. 1773) in Haripur-Guler, asylum was given to refugee artists trained in the Mughal style of painting. Thus developed the Kangra style, where artists adopted themes from the love poetry of Jayadeva, Bihari and Keshav Das and where miniatures were suffused with romantic love and bhakti mysticism (see M.S. Randhawa, Kangra Paintings on Love, New Delhi, 1962, p. 19).