Roots around 1600 under the Nayakas; the style as known today formed at the Maratha court of Thanjavur (1676 to 1855) · Thanjavur (Tanjore) and the Tamil country, Tamil Nadu
Tanjore painting
Devotional panel paintings from Thanjavur, built up in raised gesso and covered with gold foil and glass. They were made to hang in puja rooms and bhajan halls, a god at the centre and everything else in attendance.
How to recognise it
- Painted on cloth pasted onto a wooden plank, often jackfruit or teak
- Thick raised gesso covered in gold foil, set with glass beads or, rarely, stones
- One main deity, framed in an arch or pavilion, with smaller figures around
- Rounded faces and almond eyes; flat colour, with shading only on the face
- Red grounds most often, sometimes blue or green
Locally these are palagai padam, plank pictures. The Nayaka rulers of Thanjavur supported painting from about 1600, and when the Vijayanagara empire fell, artists moved to their court. The painters were Telugu-speaking families from Rayalaseema in Andhra, the Rajus of Thanjavur and Tiruchi and the Naidus of Madurai. The style took its familiar form under the Maratha rulers of Thanjavur between 1676 and 1855, and reached its height under Serfoji II, who also encouraged cheaper glass paintings in the Chinese reverse-painting technique.
After the Marathas, the mercantile Chettiar community kept the painters busy, with a preference for Shaiva subjects. The British commissioned them too, and the same painters made album sets in the Company manner on European paper, without gesso or gold.
The making is slow. Cloth is glued to the plank with gum arabic, coated with a chalk or limestone paste, and dried. The outline is drawn, or traced from a stencil. Raised areas are built up, covered with gold foil and set with glass. Earlier painters used vegetable and mineral colours; most now use chemical paints. Most masters never signed. Thanjavur painting received a Geographical Indication in 2007 to 2008, and today it is also made as a festive souvenir.
What to look for
Tanjore is generous: thick gesso, a lot of gold, a simple central icon. Its neighbour, Mysore painting, is the opposite in almost every way. The gold differs too: Tanjore painters used gold-coated silver leaf over large areas, where Mysore used pure gold leaf, and less of it.
