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TECHNIQUE OF INDIAN PAINTING
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movement of the figures, in the expressive drawing of the hands, and in the way in which the hang of jewelled ornaments upon the body is made to explain its form and action.

The jewellery in Indian painting and sculpture plays the same part as the grace-notes or microtones in Indian music. The artist unfolds his main scheme with the simplest and most direct methods, a simplicity not impelled by weakness, but by the urgent desire to get to the heart of the matter at once. The contours and modelling of the main forms are thus treated with the greatest boldness and breadth, and at the same time with a firmness and decision which are the exact opposites of the halting rhythm of many Western experimentalists of modern times, who, without an age-long tradition of culture to guide them, try to invoke the spirit of the East. By way of contrast to these broad effects, the jewellery and other accessories are used as sparkling points of interest which are elaborated with the minutest finish and delicacy of touch. By these contrasting methods the best Indian painters achieved a perfectly balanced rhythm and fullness of contents without overcrowding.

The Ajantā paintings now extant cover a period of about six centuries, from circ. a.d. 100 to circ. 628. They were first satisfactorily photographed about eight years ago, through the enterprise of Lieut.-Colonel Victor Goloubeff, the editor of Ars Asiatica, who presented a set of his splendid photographs to the Musée Cernuschi in Paris, which gives a much clearer impression of the spirit and wonderful technique of these masterpieces of the classic art of India than the copies made by the students of the Bombay School of Art, which provided the material for Mr. John Griffiths' well-known volume on Ajantā (1897). The more