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What is Tanjore painting?

Tanjore painting is a classical South Indian painting style, which was inaugurated from the town of Thanjavur (anglicized as Tanjore). The art form draws its inspiration from way back about 1600 AD, a period when the Nayakas of Thanjavur under the suzerainty of the VijayanagaraRayas encouraged art—chiefly, classical dance and music—as well as literature, both in Telugu and Tamil and painting of chiefly Hindu religious subjects in temples. It is distinguished by its famous gold coating. It has been recognized as a Geographical indication by the Government of India in 2007-08.

Thanjavur paintings are characterised by rich and vivid colors, simple iconic composition, glittering gold foils overlaid on delicate and inlay of glass beads and pieces or very rarely precious and semi-precious gems. Episodes from Hindu Puranas, Sthala-puranas and other religious texts were visualised, sketched or traced and painted with the main figure or figures placed in the central section of the picture (mostly within an architecturally delineated space such as a mantapa or prabhavali) surrounded by several subsidiary figures, themes and subjects. There are also many instances when Jain, Sikh, Muslim, other religious and even secular subjects were depicted in Tanjore paintings.

How Tanjore paintings are made?

Thanjavur paintings are panel paintings done on wooden planks, and hence referred to as palagaipadam (palagai = "wooden plank"; padam = "picture") in local parlance.

The first step towards making of Tanjore painting starts from Board Preparation, where we prepare the surface for the painting.

Fundamental Art work starts here where we draw the outline of the Subject we intend to do.  The outline of the painting is drawn after which stone work marking is done.

In this step we do the fixing of the Semi-Precious Stones in the Boards, where it looks like ornaments and adds beauty to the paintings.

Mukk work is done to bring an embossing effect in the painting which is  done with mixture of Tanjore painting lime stone powder and Arabic Gum.

In this step we create fine design above the Base Mukk work, where curtain design, ornaments, others are drawn with thick mukk compound and after which it will be left to dry completely.

After this we paste the 22ct Pure gold foils over the Mukk work and Brush design work. The gold foil is cut into suitable shape and size to suit the painting design and will be pasted using Gum Arabic.

Here we start the colouring work, where we do the body colouring  with the colour suitable for the subject to create the base.After Body colouring, we start with washing work.  We create the effects in the colouring where the washing is done to match the lighting effect on the subject of the painting.

Then we match the curtains colour with the Garland colour, so the painting looks really beautiful. After finishing the curtain and mala work, Lining work is done even over the curtain, mala, and other places wherever necessary. And we draw the line design over the Gold foil to get a good effect on the painting.

After finishing all other work, finally face feature work is done, where most care has to be shown because it creates the final image for the whole process. Then Framing of the painting is done.

What we do?