Stair Landing Wall Art

Stair Landing — 3 museum-grade prints sized and toned for the room. The Kishangarh school flourished in the mid-18th century under Raja Sawant Singh (the poet-prince 'Nagari Das'), whose master painter Nihal Chand fixed the idealized feminine profile now universally called Bani Thani — a name borrowed from a court singer-poet in the raja's circle. It belongs to the Rajput miniature umbrella of Rajasthan alongside Mewar, Bundi, Marwar, Amber and the Pahari Kangra school, all painted in mineral pigments — lapis, malachite, hingul vermillion, orpiment — and ochre 'gold' on burnished wasli paper, in flat symbolic perspective. The abhisarika is one of the classic ashta-nayika (eight heroine types) of Sanskrit and Hindi love poetry — the woman who sets out at night to meet her beloved, braving rain, darkness and serpents. It was a favourite of the Kangra school, which flourished in the Himachal foothills in the late 18th and early 19th centuries under Raja Sansar Chand, with painters trained in the Guler-Kangra lineage who softened Rajput flatness with naturalistic hills, tender skies and lyrical figures. Mewar, ruled from Udaipur, is among the oldest and boldest of the Rajput miniature schools — known for flat saturated grounds, frontal symmetry and clear court hierarchy rather than the soft naturalism of the Pahari hills. Lake palaces such as Jag Niwas and Jag Mandir on Lake Pichola were a favourite Udaipur subject, painted as flat marble pavilions on a single blue water field.

Updated 22 Jun 2026