Madhubani Painting | Madhubani Folk Art | Indian Madhubani Art

Folk and tribal art in India takes on different forms through varied medium such as pottery, painting, metalwork, paper-art, weaving and jewellery. Folk art is generally produced by tribal people who have little or no artistic training and use established techniques and styles of a particular region or culture. This form of popular art is the expression of that particular castes, tribes, and regions sensitivity. The importance of popular art reside in the fact that it creates a form of artistic expression which reveals the psychology, moral values and customs of the rural society from which it emerges.

Madhubani Paintings

The Region

Madhubani, which in literal translation means Forest of Honey, has been the cultural centre of Mithila region and today is an important district in the northern part of Bihar, India. Mithila itself was an ancient large and powerful kingdom, mentioned in the Ramayana, in what is now north-eastern India and southern Nepal.

History

The origins of Madhubani / Mithila Painting are shrouded in antiquity. Tradition states that this style of painting originated at the time of the Ramayana, when King Janak commissioned artists to do paintings at the time of marriage of his daughter, Sita, to Lord Rama.

What's certain is that Madhubani painting has been done by the women of villages on the mud wall of huts for centuries - marking festivals, religious events, and other milestones of the life-cycle such as birth, sacred thread ceremony, and marriage. The painting skills and rituals have been an exclusively female domain, passed down for generations from mother to daughter.

Themes and motifs

Girls learn to play with the brush and colours at an early age and develop their skills and technique, culminating in the decoration of the Kohbar (nuptial room) based on mythological, folk themes, and tantric symbolism. The paintings in this chamber are designed to bless the couple. The central theme of all paintings is love and fertility and it usually depicts Sita's marriage or one of Krishna & Radha episodes.

Other events such as festivals, religious, birth will also show Kali, Durga, Ravana and Hanuman making strong appearances on the wall and floor painted murals. Usually the Gods are positioned centrally in the frame while floral motifs form the background. Symbols of fertility and prosperity like fish, parrot, elephant, turtle, sun, moon, bamboo tree, lotus, etc are also prominent.

These paintings were done on the mud based surfaces washed with clay or often coated with a layer of cow-dung. Vegetable dyes, black soot, carnation pollen, red clay were used as colours using homemade brush of twigs wrapped with some strips of cloth.

"The bold natural colours, intricate linear designs, stylised representations and underlying references to Hindu mythology and iconography make this art form both historically rich, as well as modern in its abstract representation of form."

Madhubani Art transfers to paper

What led the women painters to share their work with the larger world was a major ecological and economic crisis that resulted from a prolonged drought in 1966-68 that struck Madhubani and the surrounding region of Mithila. In order to create a new source of non-agricultural income, the women artists were encouraged to produce their traditional paintings on handmade paper for commercial sale. Since then, painting has become a primary source of income for scores of families.

Categories of Madhubani Paintings

Three different schools of Madhubani paintings have emerged - aligned mainly along different caste.

For more information on Indian religious and mythical figures, please refer to our glossary.