Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c11.32

c11.32

In the early Mogul times oil-painting was not practised by Indian artists, and it should be understood that these miniature pictures were not as a rule hung on the walls of apartments, or used for decoration, like modern European cabinet pictures. The pictures of the Indian *chitrâsâlas* were always painted directly in the walls in fresco, but these miniature paintings were kept like valuable manuscripts, and only brought out occasionally to be handed round for discussion and criticism; just as in Japan to-day the painted silk scrolls, called *kakemonos*, are displayed one at a time at a tea-party and afterwards carefully packed away. The refined artistic sense of the true Oriental *dilettante* would be outraged by the hideous jumble of heterogeneous pictures which we crowd together in modern exhibitions and use to “decorate” our houses.