Indian Painting

Less than twenty years ago the West had settled down to the comfortable feeling that there was no such art as painting in India. The few publications on Indian art previous to that time distinctly state that the country is deficient in pictorial art. The acceptance of this dictum Simplified matters, and made what little study there was of this subject comparatively easy. It is true, a certain number of decoratively coloured miniatures had at different times been obtained from India, but in the museums of the West these were usually catalogued as Persian, and actually sometimes as Chinese. They were not regarded as examples of fine art, or even as pictures, but generally treated as ornamental book illustrations — in other words, interesting Specimens of applied art. The reason for this state of affairs is not far to seek. The West regarded art from only one point of View — the Western point of View. Unless a picture or piece of sculpture conformed to the academic canons of the West, unless the perspective of the one or the anatomy of the other was entirely in accordance with the Western text-books on these two sciences, it was not a work of art but an Oriental curio.