The interplay between indigenous Indian painting traditions and
imported Persianate influences invigorated painting on the
Indian subcontinent for over three hundred years. Primary
Colors, featuring some thirty works from the Museum's
collection, juxtaposes two intriguingly similar groups of
paintings, one from seventeenth-century Central India and
another from eighteenth-century Nepal. These works reflect
indigenous painting traditions, characterized by expanses of
intense red, blue, and yellow as well as figures seen in sharp
profile, but they also include imagery of costume and
architecture drawn from Islamic prototypes. Dynamic painting
traditions flourished in Central India under Hindu, Jain, and
Muslim patronage even before Mughal rulers imported Persian
painters in the early sixteenth century. In the seventeenth
century, the Hindu rulers of Malwa (an area of Central India)
developed active workshops that re-emphasized pre-Mughal forms.
In the eighteenth century, Nepalese painting took a surprising
turn