Kalighat Painting - Lord Karthikeyan

Kangra Painting - Annapoorani Amman

India's rich painting heritage encapsulates diversified shades in the world of paitings.The Kangra Miniatures of the Pahari School is also an integral part of Traditional Indian Paintings.This art form made a mark in the 18th century. Kangra School of miniature paintings was influenced by the Mughal Miniature style of painting, though it successfully retained its distinctiveness.

These ethnic indian paintings were naturalistic and employed cool, fresh colors. The colors were primarily extracted from minerals, vegetables and possessed enamel-like luster.Ever enticing greenery of the landscape, brooks, springs were the recurrent images on the miniatures.Painters explored endless themes for their paintings from the texts of the Gita Govinda, Bhiari's Satsai, and the Baramasa of Keshavdas. Similarily the eternal love of Krishna and Radha rejoicing the moments of love was also portrayed very frequently.

The paintings based on Ragmalas (musical nates) also found patronage in Kangra school. Some of the famous Kangra Ragmala Paintings include Ragini Gujari, Raga Lalit and Ragini Sorathi.

A distinct aspect of kangra School of painting adopted in later course was that it included the scenes under star-studded skies and also portrayed storms with lightning running across the horizon. This feature was not found in any other style of painting . Kangra miniatures also depicted towns and cluster of houses in the distance iagain in later periods.Although mountains above the height of 13,000 ft were never made a part of the paintings.