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4. Mola Ram and Gharwal Minature Painting: An Appraisal
Madhu Jain

Principal, Munna Lal Jai Narayan Khemka Girls College
Chilkana Rd, Samrat Vikram Colony, Khatakheri,
Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, 247001

(Abstract)

Mola Ram lived through the reigns of ten Garhwali kings. He states in his Garh Rajvansh ka Itihas that many of those rulers patronised him as a poet, but none as a painter neither any of them encouraged painting. For that reason that one finds very few Garhwali rulers depicted in the paintings and no miniature depicting a court scene is available. In one of such miniatures, ascribed to Mola Ram, Praduman Shah and his brother Parakram Shah are shown seated, but that appears to be a work of some novice rather than of an accomplished artist. Mukandi Lal had reproduced a miniature --Ruler entertained by dancing girl -- in one of his articles ‘Garhwal School of Painting’ 1948 1949 issue of the RoopaLekha. He identified the ruler, with the well-trimmed Muslim beard and outfit, in that painting as Lalit Shah. Archer ably refuted that identification on the logic that Lalit Shah supported long flowing beard, as may be affirmed from the inscribed painting of the king done by Mola Ram himself. Mola Ram has been popularly regarded to be the most accomplished painter of the Garhwal School of painting, but even Mola Ram’s admirer, Jaykrit Shah regarded painting as a worthless effort as Mola Ram himself concedes in his Garh Rajavansh ka Itihas, wherein he claims ‘chitrasa lnahak vanavo’.The pertinent question is, did an independent school of painting develop in Garhwal, which the author has attempted in the present paper.

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