# Indian painted photographs

> Studio and court portraits from India in which a painter takes over the photograph. On an albumen or, later, gelatin silver print of a frontal, still sitter, the face is tinted lightly while jewels, regalia and often the costume, throne and ground are laid on in colour, from transparent tints that heighten the print to opaque gouache or oil that buries it: turquoise, rose, emerald and gold on flat painted grounds, sometimes inside a painted oval and border like a miniature. Each is a unique portrait, of rank at court or a family keepsake, made from the 1860s into the 1970s.

- Period: 1860–1980
- Where it began: Princely courts and commercial studios of India from the 1860s
- Kind: Vernacular & studio
- Also called: Painted photographs, Overpainted photographs, Painted photo-portraits, Hand-painted photographic portraits
- Page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/indian-painted-photography/

## How the look is made

- Photograph the sitter frontal, still and dressed in full regalia, seated on a throne or chair or beside a draped table, and treat the print as the painter's underdrawing.
- Keep the face largely photographic and tint it lightly; heighten the costume, turban and jewellery in colour, and at the heavy end, as often at court, bury them in opaque gouache or oil, with pearls, gems and gold picked out in raised white, colour and metal.
- Often paint out the studio: turn the background into an even brown, green or dark ground and lay carpets and floors as flat patterned planes, as in Indian miniature painting.
- Use dense, saturated colour as a sign of rank: turquoise and rose silks, emerald necklaces, gilt thrones, never the plain grey of an untouched print.
- Finish the print as a painting and a keepsake: often, at court, an oval aperture, painted margins with scrolls and ruled borders and an inscription naming the sitter or the painter; then mount and frame it as a single object for the household or court.

## How it is lit

- Soft daylight from one side in a studio or palace room, the sitter against a plain dark or neutral backdrop that the painter later covers.
- Even frontal light on a seated or enthroned figure, flat enough that paint rather than shadow models the costume and the ground.

### A light plan from its choices (schematic)

- Key: the open sky, all around and above, soft.

## Camera settings

40–65 mm · f/5.6–f/16 · 0.5–10 s · ISO 1–100 (on whole-plate), inferred. Inferred from the processes: a wooden plate camera with a normal to long portrait lens, the sitter held still in daylight; wet collodion (about ISO 1) needed seconds in the 19th century, gelatin plates and film (up to about ISO 100) under a second in the 20th.

## Directing people

Rulers and nobles sit full-face on a throne or chair, feet on a footstool and hands on the knees or on a sword hilt, or lean an elbow on a draped table with a hand on a dagger; women sit with the veil drawn over the head and hands in the lap to show bangles and rings. Expressions are grave and the gaze meets the lens.

## Styling

Court or festive dress: embroidered coats, jewelled turbans, saris with the veil over the head; pearls, emeralds, bangles, rings, a watch, a sword. A throne or carved chair, footstool, draped table and patterned carpet before a plain backdrop the painter later covers; every jewel placed to be seen.

## Before you shoot it

These are likenesses of real, often named people: rulers and their families, courtiers, priests and Jain monks, and women from households that kept purdah, who were rarely photographed and whose names were often not recorded. Surviving portraits include family keepsakes that reached the art market with their sitters' names lost (the two Cleveland prints came through a Paris gallery with sale labels on the back and no names); do not generate them as anonymous ethnic types such as 'Indian women'. Some show deities such as Srinathji of Nathdwara and carry devotional meaning. Do not generate imitations of named sitters, rulers or deities, never present a generated image as a historical painted photograph or as anyone's ancestor, and do not use the style as exotic 'maharaja' costume. For new work, commission and credit such painters rather than imitating them, and never prompt in their names.

## Photographs

- Photographer unknown, overpainted by Shivalal, Portrait of Jaswant Singh II of Jodhpur, c. 1875. City Palace Museum, Udaipur (Maharana of Mewar Charitable Foundation); image via Wikimedia Commons (public domain). Shown on the page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_Jaswant_Singh_II_of_Jodhpur_(1873%E2%80%931896).jpg
- Unknown artist, Overpainted photograph of Maharaja Mohinder Singh of Patiala enthroned, late 19th century. Kenneth Robbins Collection; ACSAA slide 15084, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain). Shown on the page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Overpainted_photograph_of_Maharaja_Mohinder_Singh_of_Patiala_enthroned.jpg
- Untitled (Portrait of a Woman in Blue Sari and Veil), India, 20th century. The Cleveland Museum of Art, John Cook Memorial Fund, 2017.10. Shown on the page: https://clevelandart.org/art/2017.10
- Untitled (Portrait of a Woman in Gray Sari and Veil), India, 20th century. The Cleveland Museum of Art, John Cook Memorial Fund, 2017.11. Shown on the page: https://clevelandart.org/art/2017.11

## Sources

- Rajput painting, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajput_painting (citing Beach, Fischer and Goswamy, Masters of Indian Painting, 2011, pp. 755–758: the painted photo-portrait grew from Western tinted photographs; 'careful overpainting in gouache (or even oil) entirely obscures the original print'; Shivalal dominated Mewar court painting from the late 1860s to the early 1890s while his brother Mohanlal took up photography; Ram Singh II of Jaipur as an early photographer)
- Portrait of Jaswant Singh II of Jodhpur, Metropolitan Museum of Art loan record: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/76375 (read from the Internet Archive copy of 15 June 2025, as the live page returned 429; 'Photographer unknown, overpainted by Shivalal', ca. 1875, hand-colored albumen print, 26.1 × 22.7 cm; credit line 'Lent by Maharana of Mewar Charitable Foundation, The City Palace Complex, Udaipur'; inscribed '... Shri Jaswant Singhji's picture made by painter Shivalal'; exhibited in 'Wonder of the Age: Master Painters of India, 1100–1900', 26 September 2011–8 January 2012; the label: 'either the entire photograph was overpainted, or more commonly, features were heightened in color'; portrait, regalia, costume and jewellery favoured). Image and the same text on Wikimedia Commons, in the category 'City Palace (Udaipur) - Museum': https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_Jaswant_Singh_II_of_Jodhpur_(1873%E2%80%931896).jpg
- Portrait of Mohan Lal with His Camera, Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_Mohan_Lal_with_His_Camera.jpg (context for the origin, not itself a painted photograph: an albumen print, c. 1875, artist unknown, perhaps Shivalal; City Palace Museum, Udaipur, 2008.01.0104; lent by the Maharana of Mewar Charitable Foundation to the Met's 'Wonder of the Age', 2011–12; Mohanlal court painter and photographer of Udaipur, shown beside a wooden plate camera on a tall tripod)
- Maharana Bhupal Singh, Chhaganlal Gaur, Los Angeles County Museum of Art: https://collections.lacma.org/object/127190 (photographer unknown, overpainted by Chhaganlal Gaur, active 1916–45; c. 1940, opaque watercolour on photograph, cardboard mount, M.2004.192; overpainting of royal portraits ranged from subtle tinting to pigment so heavy it obscured the photograph; colour used sparingly on the face, thick impasto on the jacket; enlarged to an oval; a painted photograph of Bhupal Singh by Gaur made around his accession in 1930 is in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 2004.36.1)
- Painted Photographs: Coloured Portraiture in India, ed. Rahaab Allana and Pramod Kumar K.G. (Mapin and the Alkazi Collection of Photography, 2008), sample pages: https://alkazifoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/Painted-Photographs-Binder.pdf (studio karkhanas modelled on Mughal and regional painting schools; some studios served royal patrons, others 'the burgeoning and prosperous mercantile and professional classes'; painted backdrops of landscapes, gardens, stallions and boudoirs; bazaar photographers with vivid backdrops; 'a monochromatic ground that ... yields to a layered impasto of colour'; most works from Rajasthan and from studios in Bombay and Calcutta; Pannalal Parasram Gaud; Jujiram Gopilal of Nathdwara; captions for 'Maharani of Nepal', gelatin silver print and watercolour, c. 1900, ACP:2000.14.0076, and 'Jain Monks and Their Attendants', gelatin silver print and watercolour, c. 1920–40, ACP:98.83.0044; women in purdah rarely photographed)
- Painted Photographs exhibition, Alkazi Foundation for the Arts: https://alkazifoundation.org/painted-photographs/ (Brunei Gallery, SOAS, 9 July–27 September 2008; works from the 1860s to the 1930s from the princely states of Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Gujarat and studios in Bombay and Calcutta)
- Untitled (Portrait of a Woman in Gray Sari and Veil), Cleveland Museum of Art: https://clevelandart.org/art/2017.11 (hand-coloured gelatin silver print, 20th century; a tradition extending back to the mid-1800s; hand-painting cost extra and gave the portrait the status of a luxury object akin to painted portraiture). The open-access API records of 2017.11 and 2017.10 (https://openaccess-api.clevelandart.org/api/artworks/2017.11, https://openaccess-api.clevelandart.org/api/artworks/2017.10) give provenance from Brutal's Gallery, Paris, acquired 2017, and adhesive sale labels on the back with prices; neither names the sitter
- Overpainted photograph of Maharaja Mohinder Singh of Patiala enthroned, Wikimedia Commons (ACSAA slide of the Kenneth Robbins Collection): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Overpainted_photograph_of_Maharaja_Mohinder_Singh_of_Patiala_enthroned.jpg (late 19th century; conventions of Indian painting such as a two-dimensional ground; a full-face portrait where miniatures usually showed heads in profile)
- Shruti Janardhan, 'The dying art of hand-painting photographs', The Caravan, 1 August 2019: https://caravanmagazine.in/lede/dying-art-hand-painting-photographs (hand-painting arrived in India around the same time as photography, the first painters being court painters; colour photography killed the demand and digital technologies replaced the practice; Jaykumar Shankar, of a family of hand-painters of six generations, works from an office in Delhi's Patel Nagar with transparent photo colours; a photograph of the 1971 war hand-painted by his mother; his collaboration with Vasantha Yogananthan from 2016)
- 'The painted photographs of Mewar', Outlook Traveller: https://www.outlooktraveller.com/amp/story/explore/insider/the-painted-photographs-of-mewar (earliest Udaipur pieces from 1865 under Maharana Shambhu Singh; paint used to hide the faults of early photographs; about 250 pictures at the palace, some shown in the Fateh Niwas gallery of the City Palace Museum)
- Christopher Pinney, Camera Indica: The Social Life of Indian Photographs (Reaktion Books, 1997), publisher's page: https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/product/camera-indica-ebook (a 'distinctive post-colonial Indian photographic practice' using over-painting, collage, composite printing and doubling; photographic portraiture in India over the last 150 years)
- Wet Collodion and Ambrotype Process (Scully & Osterman), EdinPhoto: https://edinphoto.org.uk/1_early/1_early_photography_-_processes_-_wet_collodion_-_osterman.htm (collodion plates have a rating of about ASA 1, so long exposures are required)
- Collodion process, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collodion_process (wet collodion needed only a few seconds to expose an image in daylight; sensitive only to blue and ultraviolet; gelatin dry plates could be made much more sensitive)
- Untitled (Portrait of a Woman in Gray Sari and Veil), Cleveland Museum of Art: https://clevelandart.org/art/2017.11 (hand-coloured gelatin silver print, 15 × 10.9 cm; hand painting cost extra and gave the portrait the status of a luxury item)

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