Mandwa Paintings

Shekhawati region in western India, is famous for its mural paintings. It is like a huge open air gallery of painted walls, havelis and palaces in the vast expanse of the desert of Rajasthan in India. Mandwa is one such place, where every nooks and corner of the town, street, home has been painted with frescoes. We had been to one such ancient home where the interiors are beautifully painted. (Click on the images for bigger picture)

Here the theme is based on royal army of Rajasthan Kings. The paintings show royal assembly.

Even the ceiling is painted with floral designs.

Murals of Laxminarayan Temple, Orchha

In Orchha (State: Madhya Pradesh) the Laxminarayan Temple of 1622 is one of the most important tourist attraction of the place. (Click on the images for bigger picture)

The inner portion of the temple in the ceilings are adorned with murals, where the themes are based on Sage Valmiki’s Ramayana, and the poet, Tulsidas’, Ram Charitra Manas. In the painting above among other things one can see Lord Krishna with Radha.

The vivacious colors of the frescoes are still retained. In the painting above there are various animals like men on elephants and horses. There are also peacocks at the corners.

Murals of Raj Mahal, Orchha - 1

Orchha (State: Madhya Pradesh) has an imposing fort, dating back to the 16th century. The Fort Complex contains magnificent palaces of the Bundela kings presenting a matchless spectacle of those times. (Click on the images for bigger picture)

One of such palace is 17th century palace, the Raj Mahal. When compared to plain exterior of the Raj Mahal, the paintings on the interiors are extraordinary.

These are the paintings in the Queen's room. The ceilings and walls are painted beautifully.

These paintings depict scenes from various Indian epics.

Desert Romance

This is one of the numerous paintings one can shop in the markets Rajasthan (click on the image to see the bigger image).

The above painting depicts romance in the sand dunes of the desert.

Datia Palace

This 16th century palace is popularly known as Govind Palace or Jehangir Palace. The palace is built using the Bundela style of architecture, which is a blend of the Mughal and Rajput architecture. The arched openings, brackets and dome is characteristic of the Mughal architecture, while the lotus petals and use of animal sculpture and avian painting are symbols of the Rajput architecture. (Click on the images for bigger picture)

In the central courtyard there is a five-story structure with apartments for the royal family. It is connected by bridge corridors to the middle of each side. The facades are decorated with bracketed balconies, arcades and wide eaves which create a glorious play of light and shade.

It is the representative of one of the finest architectures of the Bundela period. The place is decorated the Bundela mural paintings. It is impressive architecturally and has nice mural painted on the walls.

Ceilings are intricately decorated. These murals have withstood the test of time.

From Datia we proceeded to Jhansi

Distance: Datia ---> Jhansi 34kms

Shekhawati Paintings

Shekhawati region in western India, is famous for its mural paintings. It is like a huge open air gallery of painted walls, havelis and palaces in the vast expanse of the desert of Rajasthan in India. Every nooks and corner of the each town, street, home has been painted with frescoes. The homes built by the people of the region feature exquisite paintings that decorate their walls, doors, and interiors. The themes of these frescoes depict gods, kings, flowers and scenes from daily life. (Click on the images for bigger picture)

The technique of Fresco painting in Shekhawati is very similar to the Italian Fresco technique of the 14th century. Mostly vegetable pigments were used for coloring. Some of the main ingredients are kajal for black, lime for white, neel for blue, geru for red, kesar for orange, yellow clay for yellow.

The above image is interior courtyard of haveli in Mandwa taken in the night. This technique has been used since 1580 in this region. So this paintings in this area are around this period.

Man Mandir Palace, Gwalior

This magnificent palace inside the Gwalior Fort was built by Raja Man Singh of the Tomar dynasty between 1486 and 1516. The palace can be reached by north eastern fort entrance. Because of the richly tiled and painted decorations with elephants and peacocks, and the exceptional fresco with the ducks paddling in turquoise waters, it is also known as Chit Mandir or Painted Palace. (Click on all the images for bigger picture)

This palace has four levels, two of them are underground. Six rounded towers crowned with cupolas relieve this 80 feet high structure. The beauty is further enhanced by blue ceramic mosaic and petite trellis work.

It consists of two open courts surrounded by apartments with carved stones, pillars. There are various rooms serving different purpose such as affairs of state, relaxation, decorated ornately with beautiful paintings, different figures of human beings, carved animals and flowers. The walls of these halls were decorated with triangular friezes.

Even the ceilings in each room had different designs carved out as below:

This is one of the few architecture marvel in the fort that has withstood the test of time.

Zoo Rock, Bhimbetka

The most famous cave or monument in Bhimbetka is Zoo Rock which is around 10000 years old. The paintings here are primarily in white color and few are in red color. These paintings depict most of the animals like bison, deer, elephant, horses. (Click on all the images for bigger & clear picture)

There are scenes depicting community living, with groups of people dancing, drinking, playing musical instruments.

There are also figures depicting war scenes with people on horses. They may be king and his soldiers. The king can be differentiated from the soldiers by the decoration on the horse and sometimes an umbrella above his head. You can see the swords and other weapons used in warfare then.

Most of the paintings are on the ceilings of the cave. The paintings on the outer edges are lighter than the ones away from the edges as the water could not reach the paintings that are in the inner circle.

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Bhimbetka Prehistoric Art

Apart from the cave paintings of Bhimbetka which are old as 10000 B.C, that were seen in earlier post there are plenty more paintings that are very colorful and artistic.

Auditorium Cave is a spacious horizontal tunnel about 25m in length, ending in a cathedral-like hall that opens in three directions. At the center of this junction visible from all four entrances is a large rock, 2.5m high and 3.4m wide, called Chief's Rock. (Click on all the images for bigger picture)


On the left side wall of the East passage into Auditorium cave there are paintings on the walls. They are red in color. The prominent figures are that of cattle, goat, deer, hand prints, and double bar.


One can see another beautiful cave painting in the nearby cave. This is located in a elevated region. There are two sets of paintings in this caves. At the lower bottom they are in white color and the top are in the red color. In the above one can see figures of people riding the horse as if they are going for a war.

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Bhimbetka Cave Paintings

The caves of Bhimbetaka have paintings that date back to various periods during which these caves could have been inhabited. The main colors used in these paintings are red and white. Red color paintings are bright, while the white paintings look faded. The quality of the paintings is so great that the painting appear so fresh as if it has been done few days back. At lot of places, paintings have been done on top of the other, giving a feeling that the artists have used the same space to paint and re-paint. The style of paintings resembles the Worli paintings and at times the Madhubani. Most of the figures are written using geometrical shapes. Animals form the primary subject of paintings, followed by humans and occasional trees and flowers.

The rock art in these caves has been classified into various groups on the basis of the style and subject. (Click on all the images for bigger picture)

Upper Palaeolithic

The paintings in this period were mostly drawn using green and dark red colors as liner representations. The figures drawn were animals like bisons, boar.

Mesolithic

The paintings in this period are comparatively smaller in size. The linear representation of drawings are more stylish. Apart from animals, there are human figures. The hunting scenes clearly show the weapons like barbed spears, pointed sticks, bows and arrows used during those times.

Hunting scene

The depiction of communal dances, birds, mother and child, pregnant women, men carrying dead animal, drinking etc, are seen in this rock shelter range.

people dancing holding hands at the top and they are going for hunting at the bottom

Chalcolithic

The paintings in this period show that the cave dwellers of this area were in contact with the agricultural communities. They exchanged goods with them.

Early Historic

The paintings in this period are painted mostlty in red and white. The drawings have a schematic and decorative style. They mainly depict riders, religious symbols, tunic-like dresses, and the scripts of different periods.

Medival

The paintings in this period are geometric, linear and more schematic. The artistic style was crude when compared to earlier periods.

The picture below is taken at the first cave that you see as soon as one enters the cave complex. There are paintings of animals drawn in white color on the roof of the cave.

This place can be reached directly from Bhopal or from Bhojpur as I had done.

Village Life

This is one of the numerous paintings one can shop in the markets Rajasthan (click on the image to see the bigger image).

The painting here depicts how a normal day in a village may look like.

Lady from Village

Through this post, I would also like to thank Hazel of Delineating Des for her kind gesture of "Kreativ Blogger Award".

This is one of the numerous paintings one can shop in the markets Rajasthan.

The painting here depicts a lady waiting for her man to return from the field who has gone to the farm to earn the bread.

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The Shekhawati Region

After a good night sleep we were up early morning on the 2nd day of our trip for the visual splendor. We were ready by 8:00 a.m after the good continental breakfast. (Click on all the images for bigger & clear picture)

We visited various Havelis constructed by wealthy business men in the nineteenth century in the Shekhawati region. These Havelies are decorated with colored painting adorning their walls. But as the merchant families migrated, these visual attractions did not fade away and today they are some of the major attractions for the tourists visiting Rajasthan.

Next we visited Mandwa's imposing fort, right in the center. Castle Mandawa was build in 1755 by Thakur Nawal singh, a descendant of Rao Shekha, the founder of Shekhawati. Two imposing gateways lead to the central courtyard where cannons stand as a reminder of the past when they were used to repel the enemy. The palace in the fort hosts beautiful paintings. At present it is converted into the most famous hotel in the region.

From Mandwa we moved to Fathepur. The town is packed with elaborately painted mansions, temples, wells and chhatris. The Hawelis in this region depict the scenes from Mahabarath and Ramayana.

With this due to shortage of time we decided to travel to Bikaner, the camel country.

Distance: Mandwa ---> Bikaner is 164 kms

P.S: Shekhavti comprises of important towns like Mandwa, Fathepur, Jhunjhunu, Nawalgarh.