This work forms one of most valuable contributions made till date to the area of Punjab studies. For Painters at the Sikh Court is more than simply a work about painting and patronage: the material presented in it enhances and deepens our very understanding of how things worked at the Sikh courts, both at the royal and the sub-royal levels. The twenty documents that constitute the body of this study – a chance find – come from one single family of painters in the Pahari area, members of which took up service at Lahore after patronage dried up in their own native region. But, taken together, they form a formidable body of hard information about painters, their migrations, their relationships with new patrons, the terms on which they were engaged, among other things. Studies of painting at the Sikh courts would be remarkably thin without the substance that these documents contain. The significance of this study goes, however, well beyond the area of the Punjab, for one knows that nothing comparable to this material is available from any other period of Indian painting, or from any other region.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR B.N. Goswamy
B.N. Goswamy, distinguished art historian, was till recently Professor of Art History at the Punjab University, Chandigarh. A leading authority in the field of Indian painting, his work has been of seminal importance both to the studies of Pahari painting and painting in the Punjab. Among the most significant of his published works are: Pahari Painting, The Family as the Basis of Style (Marg, 1968); Pahari Paintings of the Nala Damayanti Theme (Delhi, 1975); Essence of Indian Art (San Francisco, 1986); Wonders of a Golden Age (Zurich, 1987); Pahari Masters: Court Painters of Northern India (Zurich, 1992); Indian Costumes in the collection of the Calico Museum of Textiles (Ahmedabad, 1993); and Nainsukh of Guler: A great Indian painter from a small Hill State (Zurich, 1997). His most recent work, Painted Visions: The Goenka Collection of Indian Painting, was published by the Lalit Kala Akademi earlier this year. Professor Goswamy has been visiting Professor at the Universities of Heidelberg, Zurich, Pennsylvania, California at Berkeley, California at Los Angeles, and Texas at Austin, and has lectured extensively both in Europe and the U.S., and in India. He has also been responsible for major exhibitions of Indian art in Paris, San Francisco and Zurich.
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