Ragamalas: India’s poetry in paint

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Ragamala Paintings from India: Poetry, Passion, Song

By Catherine Glynn, Robert Skelton, and Anna Dallapiccola

This small but focused exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, presents an ancient Indian artform, the ragamala.  Meaning a ‘garland of ragas’, ragamala refers to a set of paintings inspired by ragas (melodies) crafted to evoke specific moods.  The paintings themselves are small and intricate, designed to be held in the hand, savoured, examined and passed around.  Though occasionally bound into volumes, they were more often left as collections of loose images.  Each painting has a poem or caption – describing the mood, season, time of day – printed on the top or the back of the work, while wide margins on all four sides protect the central image.  Though the genre arose in northern India in the 15th century, it soon spread throughout the subcontinent, dispersed by travellers, traders and a peripatetic court. 

Over the centuries ragamalas evolved, absorbing regional and international influences.  The earliest ragamalas present a simple image, in profile, against a flat background, but with time ragamala artists began to imitate European techniques. While the presence of dragons or swirling clouds suggests the influence of Oriental porcelain, the depiction of skies reflects the exposure to European art.  Tentative bands of blue sky above and green grass below suggest European landscape traditions, as does meticulous detail and charmingly skewed recessional perspective.  In the mid-19th century, with the rise of British rule and the end of affluent Indian patrons, this intimate, private art form fell into oblivion, supplanted by European-style wall-mounted paintings designed for public display.

While the identities of most ragamala painters are unknown, there are distinct regional styles and chronological differences. The earliest known ragamala was a series of 42 images of deities ornamenting the margins of a 1475 music manuscript.  Within a century the focus of ragamalas had shifted from the divine to the mundane, depicting human beings in rich, vivid settings full of topographical and narrative detail.   This shift is attributed to various factors, chief among them the spread of the bhakti movement, which emphasized a personal relationship between the individual and his chosen god.  This relationship was often expressed allegorically with a lone woman – representing the human, longing for her lover – representing the divine.  This motif sanctioned the expression of all manner of anguish, loneliness, elation and despair. 

While often set in refined court settings, the paintings also depict combat, hunting, formal receptions and sports scenes.  In the  Gauri Ragini of Shri Raga (c.1680, Rajasthan) a forlorn woman, attended by pairs of birds, gathers flowers while awaiting her lover; a walled city gleams in the background, and beneath a distant tree a holy man speaks with a pilgrim.  Painted with a tiny squirrel-hair brush, the detail is phenomenal, with insects cavorting in the trees and canons bristling from the towers of the distant city.  In contrast, the Bhasku Ragaput of Hindola Raga (c1680, Chamba) a painting of the same era, is almost abstract in its simplicity.  Celebrating a song to be sung at sunrise, it depicts a cylindrical pavilion against a rectangular wall, below a dark band of sky, suspended in which is a red circle of sun. 

One of the great glories of these paintings is their colour.  Because the works were rarely exposed to daylight, the colours are remarkably vibrant.  Manufactured from local insects, minerals and flowers, the colour palette is exotic to Western eyes. Indeed, the luminous yellow background of many of the paintings was created from the urine of cows force fed mango leaves – a practice which has recently been banned on humanitarian grounds. 

The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive education programme, and is given context by the display of key objects nearby.  In one room a sculptural pair of stone weights sits on a plinth by a painting of gymnasts training with such weights.  In another room, ceremonial urns echo the water jugs in the surrounding paintings.

 The curators have underlined the European connections by highlighting two works in the permanent collection by the British artist Tilly Kettle  (173–86).  A contemporary of Gainsborough and Reynolds, Kettle quit the competitive London art scene and headed for India, where he became court painter to the Nawab of Oudh.  Though the cross currents are subtle, it is interesting to speculate on what Kettle took from the ragamala tradition, as well as what he contributed to it.  The catalogue offers wonderful reproductions of the works, with a short explanation of each and further references.  It also provides three essays that explore the ragamala tradition in general and this collection in particular.  Both exhibition and catalogue, would delight anybody interested in Indian art, culture, or daily life.

Ragamala Paintings from India: Poetry, Passion, Song  by Catherine Glynn, Robert Skelton, Anna Dallapiccola is published by Philip Wilson Publishers, London 2011.  96 pp.,  77 col illus. ISBN 978 0 85667 698 7