by Musarrat Hasan

Copyright © Ferozsons (Pvt.) Ltd., Lahore

The following chapter has been excerpted from Dr. Hasan's excellent work, Painting in the Punjab Plains published by Ferozsons (Pvt.) Ltd., Lahore (1998) [ISBN 969 0 01426 9]. -- Editors

Water color by Abdul Rehman Ijaz

Having looked at and waded through the historical data of almost hundred years of painting extending from 1847 to 1947, my first reaction was one of bewilderment. Considering that this was the time just before the creation of Pakistan, this period has been treated quite disdainfully. In fact, after appreciation of Mughal art and history, people and critics alike seem to have forgotten that the Punjab was ever relevant in the art world. It has been recorded that Lahore was a cultural capital of the great Mughals but after that it has been totally ignored.

The cultural infrastructure that sustained a Mughal court for almost two decades could not have vanished just because the Mughals left the area or ceased to rule the land. The countless number of artists who had made Punjab their home during the Mughal presence might have dispersed to some extent during the days of turmoil, from Lahore to the Punjab Hills and the Sikh states, but they could not all have disappeared. It takes a long time for an artist to entrench himself in an area. He, more often than not, is not alone in that decision. He has a whole chain of artists to consider because art tradition in this part of the world has been carried on from father to son. In a matter of one generation this activity would spread to include uncles and their children. Apart from painters, this profession produced auxiliary trades like printing, book binding and decorating which further involved scores of people. Out of these, even if a number of people decided to move away it seems irrational to assume that the unstable conditions would be able to uproot large families completely.

The art of the Punjab Hill States has deservedly been given prominence by most art critics, but these critics have not looked further. They have not tried to discover any worthwhile art activity that might have been going on in other places of the Punjab, not realizing that many of these hill state artists were coming down to the plains during the winter season for three to four months and setting up their studios there. They created their sphere of influence and circle of artists, who would hover around and pick up any trick or expertise which the master might care to display. All this apart from A.R. Chugtai's assertion that considerable part of Punjab Pahari art in the late 19th and early 20th century was also produced in the plains and that the paintings procured from the hill states were done in the artists' free time and not due to the patronage of the hill rajas.

Punjab, it would seem, has had many ups and downs in art activity. As a result of its geographical situation, every invasion into India had to trample through Punjab en route to the capital. Even when the political conditions stabilized enought to produce a structure for good art, the local art world was invariably shattered once again by political turbulence. That is why even though very good art has been produced in Punjab, it has not lasted long enough to form a sense of continuity and thus attract the attention of art critics and connoisseurs.

"Maharaja Daleep Singh" - oil painting based on the water color by Winterhalter

After the Sikh period, there was a barren span of more than fifty years during the early years of British rule, when there was a total lack of appreciation and patronage for art in the Punjab. The old patrons had vanished and the new rulers had yet to learn to appreciate the local art traditions that were so different from their own. Apart for the general lack of appreciation for Indian art, there might also have been a feeling in the hearts of the new rulers that since the Punjab was the last of the Indian provinces to have surrendered its sovereignty to the British, it was also the last one to receive the 'civilizing' influence of the rulers. Therefore, any art movement or painting produced in these conditions away from European and British influences must be totally inferior and unworthy of notice or patronage.

The attitude persisted during the whole of the nineteenth century. However, by this time some British voices were also raised in India casting some doubt on the legitimacy of this attitude. As I have mentioned earlier, H.B. Havell's championship of Indian art traditions to a great extent raised the value of Indian art in the eyes of the British as well as local rich families who were in a position to patronize art. But, this point of view took a long time to reach the Punjab. It was already a decade into the twentieth century before Lahore's Mayo School of Arts even considered offering drawing as a subject and that too as a course to train drawing masters. The banners of Punjab painting were kept flying for a long time by this special breed of drawing masters who had been trained at the Mayo School.

That was the time when the art world was talking about the paintings done in the Bengal school as well as the paintings of the Punjab Hill states which had been recently discovered. These Pahari paintings were being considered as the successors to the glorious Mughal art tradition, whose influence and in fact whose artists had evolved this new romantic art movement.

This was also a time of great nationalistic upheaval in the Punjab, after the Jallianwala massacre and Bhagat Singh and his comrades' involvement in rebellion politics. The ruthlessness with which these protests and rebellious activities were dealt with by the British rulers, left the Punjab nation stunned. They slowly woke up to a feeling if frustration, a sense of loss and a general air of melancholy which found an echo in the sentimental and subdued water colors in the style of the Bengal school.

Uptil this time, in Bengal the British had adopted a benign and benevolent attitude towards the local art movement. They were still totally oblivious to the art activity in the Punjab, which had received the influences from the Bengal school as well as from Guler and Kangra schools of the hill states. Gradually these influences were assimilated and indiginized and a totally local Punjab art emerged. It was around 1920 that the British finally realized the importance of preserving the traditional and local art heritage and nurturing the new art trends in the Punjab. There was a brief period of about thirty years when art and the artists thrived and a distinct school of Punjab painting began to evolve in a way that it was separately recognizable as a distinct style.

"The Sikh Philosopher" - water color by Jalal-ud-Din Chugtai

Slowly and steadily the painters of the Punjab basked in a sunshine of approval received after a long time and produced the delicate and sensitive water color paintings that won appreciation not only in India but in England as well. In general, however, very few people today know about these artists. The only names that are remembered and recognized are the names of Chugtai and Allah Buksh, and one purpose of my endeavour was to bring out more information about as many other artists as possible. One realizes the importance of paintings that have the signature of the painter on them or the painting whose artist's name has been entered in some accession register or the other as they are of greater value. But let it not be forgotten that there is a greater body of beautiful work done by Punjab artists which loses a bit of its value because the signature of the artist is missing.

This is a tradition in local art that has been practised for several hundred years. Except for a very names of artists of extraordinary merit that have come down to us through the maze of history, there has traditionally been an anonymity attached to works of art that persisted over the years right down to the early twentieth century. Even in the twentieth century there were several factors that prevented the artist from signing his own name to a painting.

An artist invariably learnt his trade from an already practising ustad who might be his own father, uncle or student of his father. He did not begin to sign his pictures until the ustad, as a mark of approval puts his own signature on the student's painting. This oriental nicety may have its finer points, but it has left a lot of confusion of unsigned and sometimes wrongly signed pictures. The British patrons were also not concerned about the artists of these paintings. They wanted certain aspects of local life recorded and to them faithful representation was more important than the question of art being created. Nor were they too curious about the painters or their names. There was a quaint shyness and hesitation among the artists to put their name on something they were going to sell. It almost seemed as if they felt they were selling their name. In case of paintings with religious themes or saintly personages, an artist purposely kept himself anonymous for devotional reasons. In other instances if a Muslim artist was painting a Hindu religious episode, he preferred not to sign in order to avoid adverse comments from fellow Muslims.

As a result, today we find paintings with several types of marks of identification on them which invariably do not include the name of the artist. Some paintings are presented in the name of the patron. In the catalogues of many of the art exhibitions of that period, paintings are listed as "Paintings sent by the Maharaja of Pathiala", or "Paintings sent by the Maharaja of Kapoorthala" without mentioning the name of the artist. There are sets of paintings that are identified by the name of the owner inscribed in huge handwriting. Such paintings have been given thick border outlines in the same colors to give a sense of unity of ownership. Again, the name of the artist is not mentioned. There are also sets of paintings recognized by the name of the dealer, which has been prominently written on them. This might have been done to advertise his trade and enhance his business. It was perhaps thought expedient not to add the name of the artist, because that would provide a direct link between the buyer and painter.

Man and Woman from Wazirabad

In order to trace the painters of these works, it might be of great interest to track down each and every patron, owner or dealer and try and find any old papers and diaries that might have survived in the possession of the successors, and see if any new light can be cast on the paintings. Property registration records and construction records can provide important links of lineage of the artist families. The Directorate of Education in the Punjab can furnish useful information on the Technical Schools of the Punjab out of which so many art students joined the Mayo School. But this can only be properly done at greater leisure researching on a few artists at a time.

Of necessity, the early research work will have to be one of compiling and matching names to already existing paintings. That is the only way we can put forth a case for the geniune school of Punjab water color painting that was evolved here with the influences of the Japanese wash technique, the British water color technique, the nostalgia from Bengal, the romance from the Pahari paintings of the Punjab hill states, added to the already existing solid infrastructure of the Mughal school. All these mixed well with the touch of sadness and sense of loss, which was due to the Punjab political conditions of the time and formed the mood of the Punjab water color school of painting, which was in full glory only for about thirty years.

The events that subsequently killed this movement have already been discussed. Maybe, as some critics say, it did not have the strength and the vitality to go on much longer. But probably the real reason was a general attitude that prevailed, a certain westernization of the elite, who had gone abroad and come back with a western taste, a western education, and to some extent, western sensibilities. To them, the topical and at times illustrative and sentimental art that prevailed in the Punjab was too tame and timid to be of any consequence. These people formed the highly critical audience for whom the poor local artist was no match and was unable to counter the ruthless criticism. The artists themselves, with a very few exceptions, were overwhelmed by this new bombardment of artistic ideas. They had withstood the British pressure for so long but when all around them, everyone seemed to bow down to the new way of seeing painting, one by one many of them changed their style. They took up oil painting, and many of them under the influence of the west, painted abstract pictures while others stuck to realism, on a larger scale, which was perhaps necessary because of the medium of oil paint.

Oil painting by Amrita Sher Gill

Around the 1940's Punjab stepped past the domestic threshold and entered the international arena of art. Several artists like Sher Muhammad, Bishen Singh, Allah Buksh, Sri Ram, and Hussain Buksh had been painting in oil even in the 19th century. Some painters, after painting for the theater for which they had invariably to go to Bombay, were influenced by the highly western view point of the J.J. School of Arts in Bombay and switched over to painting larger pictures. But these were scattered instances and the shift towards western style of painting had not really been a full-fledged art movement. It was launched after Amrita Sher Gill's blistering attack on the prevailing local art, plus Roop Krishna, Mary Roop Krishna, Sheikh Ahmad, Anna Molka Ahmad's arrival on the scene from Europe with a similar point of view, which later received further strength from the presence of youngsters like Ozzir Zuby, Anwal Jelal Shemza, S. Safdar, Moyene Najmi, and Khalid Iqbal. These youngsters, after the partition of India and Pakistan, continued to project the modern point of view in Lahore, and the appearance of Shakir Ali, Zubeida Agha and Ahmad Pervez, the modern art protagonists, gave them a lot of support.

Meanwhile, Anna Molka Ahmad as head of the Fine Arts Department in the Punjab University continued to teach and spread a different type of infrastructure from the traditional one. She managed to work up an enthusiasm for painting in various women's colleges of the Punjab so that the education of Fine Arts in the province became a formal affair, which was conducted in an organized manner with the teaching of history of art as well as drawing and painting.

In this way, even though the traditional practice of art expertise carried on from generation to generation was lost due to the changed circumstances, the two art institutions in Lahore i.e. the Mayo School and the Fine Arts Department at the Punjab University imparted a new method of art education, which had its advantages as well as disadvantages. Obviously the biggest disadvantage was the move away from a glorious art inheritance and the disruption of its line of continuity which left a distinct sense of loss. This break up with the past coming a few years before the partition of India and Pakistan created a severe identity crisis, which seems to be haunting us upto this day.

Another great tragedy was the disruption of the miniature water color painting particularly the miniature water color portraits. These, even today, are in abundance and bear testimony to the great expertise and brilliance of the artists, even though in most cases we are not aware of their names.

The advantages of the new method, however, were far more noticeable than the disadvantages. The new system of art education had a strong theoretical and historical base. The printing of good art books had brought the art of the whole world within the orbit of the local artists, who were able to see and judge the works under the guidance of people who had studied abroad. Moreover, local art tradition had been an art book of illustration; with the printing of books it had received a jolt, and the lack of patronage dealt a final blow. Chugtai and some others after him continued to illustrate poetry books, but in reality, the days of glorious book illustration were over and after Chugtai there was a void.

There was also a lack of originality that had begun to creep in the local pictures that were produced. Artists were repeating old pictures and old themes, and there were no patrons to dictate to them and ask them to paint pictures on new themes. If ever they got any patronage, they were requested to copy old pictures or paint old themes by the new patrons. They even inherited tracings of figures from their ancestors and used them over and over again, with, needless to say, a loss of quality in each new tracing.

Even though the old system of art education through father to son or ustad to pupil was disrupted, the new system was equally, if not more, widespread. The two art institutions created art teachers who spread out in the whole province of the Punjab to teach art in technical schools and colleges where Fine Arts was taught as one of the subjects for a Bachelors of Art degree. After this B.A. degree, students could do their Master in Fine Arts and thus become qualified to teach in some more colleges.

Oil painting by Anwar Jalal Shemza

But the art education thus imparted cannot be compared with the old system because, traditionally, art training began with a very small child and continued day in and day out as long as there was enough light to work. In the new system there was no art education at the school level and even at the college level, where the art education began, students were able to draw and paint for only one or two hours. They could hardly compare favorably in expertise with the traditional painters of old times, but the fact they were better than the existing traditional painters was because the traditional painters lacked originality and worked for cheap slick effects.

The traditional painters also lacked the theoretical knowledge or a historical perspective, and their experience of looking at good works of art was limited. The result was an expertise in rendering but a lack of direction or refinement which comes from looking at good works of art and being aware of the historical and social background of each picture. This can only come about if the tough practical regimen is augmented with an equally extensive study of the art that is practised throughout the world, now, as well as the past hundreds of years.

Thus, whereas art education through art colleges was not able to make up the loss of time because their students were not painting and drawing in school, the traditional system developed along totally commercial lines with the result that even though some very competent effects were achieved, there was a total lack of soul or life, or any attempt to depict society.

When Pakistan came into being, there were four distinct possibilities along which its art could develop. The first was the oldest traditional style of miniature paintings done in opaque colors, which had degenerated into a mere copying of older masterpieces, but which could be revived and revitalized by attempting by attempting to infuse into the artists' art vocabulary. The there was the new twentieth century style of miniature painting done in transparent water colors. This style produced some exquisite portraits and paintings, and could be developed like the more traditional opaque miniatures into a style that observed depicted contemporary life. Another style was the water color wash technique which was an influence of the Bengal School which in turn had been influenced by the Japanese water color wash technique. This technique had been indiginized by so many painters that many people noticed the emergence of a distinct Punjab style, with A.R. Chugtai as its most notice-worthy practitioner. But after 1940, it slowly petered out, and after 1947 very few painters continued to paint in this style.

It was as late as 1940 which saw the emergence of the Punjab into the twentieth century. Various influences from the west overwhelmed the local art traditions, and even though the British had conquered in 1849, the cultural conquest came about in 1940 when many young people brought back the influences from the west and inspired many a painter of the local tradition to change their style and paint on a bigger scale in the medium of oil. These pictures were either realistic or abstract, and these are the two modes of expression that are being practised even today. An art movement requires decades to take root. The first 50 years of the existence of Pakistan have seen our artists assimilating and digesting the international modes of realism and abstraction. There are now strong indications that a vital and vibrant Punjab painting, in the old and new techniques, is lifting its head to look the world squarely in the eye and serenely announce its presence.