UPHESC Assistant Professor Drawing & Painting 2025 PYQs

Concept: Line engraving (cutting with a burin) and etching (biting lines with acid) are both intaglio processes – ink is held in incised lines.

1. Linocut is a relief process.
2. Mezzotint is an intaglio tonal method (rocker), not a line method.
3. Viscosity printing is a multi-colour intaglio technique of S.W. Hayter/Krishna Reddy, not line engraving itself.

Short trick: Incised line + acid = Intaglio family.

Concept: Buon fresco (Italian ‘fresh’): pigments mixed in water are applied to wet lime plaster; as it dries the colour is locked in.

1. Encaustic = pigment in hot wax.
2. Wash = thin transparent watercolour layers on paper (Bengal School).
3. Gouache = opaque watercolour on paper.

Short trick: Fresh plaster = Fresco.

Concept: Archaeologist Dr. Vishnu Shridhar Wakankar discovered the Bhimbetka rock shelters (Raisen, M.P.) in 1957–58.

1. Bhimbetka is a UNESCO World Heritage Site (2003) with paintings from Mesolithic onward.
2. The Tagores and Satish Gujral are modern artists.

Short trick: Wakankar – Bhimbetka – 1957.

Concept: The Great Bath is in the citadel of Mohenjo-daro (Sindh, Pakistan).

1. Lothal – dockyard; Kalibangan – ploughed field, fire altars; Harappa – granaries.

Short trick: Mohenjo-daro: Great Bath, Dancing Girl, Priest-King.

Concept: The paintings of Altamira (Spain) were discovered in 1879 by Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola (his daughter María first noticed the bison on the ceiling).

1. Coomaraswamy – art historian; B.B. Lal – Indian archaeologist (Kalibangan, Ayodhya).

Short trick: Altamira bison – Sautuola – 1879.

Concept: Numerous terracotta Mother Goddess figurines (with fan-shaped headdress, necklaces) were found at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro.

1. They show fertility worship of the Indus people.
2. Company style is 18th–19th-century painting; modern art is 20th century.

Short trick: Indus = Mother Goddess + Pashupati seal.

Concept: Likhunia, Bhaldaria and Kohbar are rock-painting sites of the Mirzapur–Kaimur region (U.P.).

1. Singhanpur is in Raigarh district, Chhattisgarh – known for hunting scenes and stick-like figures.
2. So Singhanpur is not in Mirzapur.

Short trick: Singhanpur = Raigarh (Chhattisgarh).

Concept: Font-de-Gaume (Dordogne, France) is the polychrome-painted cave famous for its bison and painted mammoths.

1. Altamira is famous for bison; Lascaux for bulls, horses and deer – no mammoth paintings.
2. Les Combarelles has mainly engraved (incised) figures rather than paintings.

Short trick: Font-de-Gaume = painted mammoths; Lascaux = bulls; Altamira = bison.

Concept: Archibald Carlleyle (Archaeological Survey) found the first prehistoric rock paintings of India in the Kaimur hills, Mirzapur, in 1867–68.

1. John Cockburn later (1880s) published the Mirzapur paintings.
2. Anderson worked at Singhanpur area (1910s); Panchanan Mitra wrote on Indian prehistory (1923).

Short trick: First Indian rock art: Carlleyle, Kaimur, 1867.

Concept: Rajasthani painting is also called Rajput painting – the term popularised by A.K. Coomaraswamy (‘Rajput Painting’, 1916).

1. Jaipur, Bundi-Kota, Jodhpur are only sub-schools (thikanas) of Rajasthani painting.

Short trick: Rajasthani = Rajput (Coomaraswamy).

Concept: ‘The Dying Princess’ (Sundari, wife of Nanda, grieving as he becomes a monk) is in Ajanta Cave 16 (Vakataka period, 5th cent.).

1. Cave 1 – Padmapani Bodhisattva; Cave 17 – Mother and Child before Buddha; Caves 9–10 – oldest paintings.

Short trick: 16 = Dying princess; 1 = Padmapani; 17 = Mother & child.

Concept: Mughal painting is a court art – portraits, durbar, hunts, history. Rajasthani painting draws on religion, folk life, seasons (Baramasa), Ragamala and love themes shared by the people.

1. So Rajasthani painting is closer to society and popular sentiment.
2. The statement is true.

Short trick: Mughal = darbar; Rajasthani = jan-jeevan (people).

Concept: ‘Bani Thani’ was painted by Nihal Chand (c.1750) under Raja Sawant Singh (Nagaridas) of Kishangarh.

1. Features: elongated face, arched brows, lotus eyes, sharp nose – called the ‘Indian Mona Lisa’ (Eric Dickinson).
2. Kangra, Guler, Chamba are Pahari schools.

Short trick: Bani Thani – Nihal Chand – Kishangarh.

Concept: W.G. Archer’s book ‘Paintings of the Sikhs’ (1966) first studied and brought Sikh painting to light.

1. Archer also wrote ‘Indian Paintings from the Punjab Hills’ and ‘Kangra Painting’.
2. O.C. Ganguly, J.C. French and N.C. Mehta wrote mainly on Rajput/Pahari/Gujarati painting.

Short trick: Archer = Punjab hills + Sikhs.

Concept: Kangra is the best-known school of Pahari painting (Himachal hills), flourishing under Raja Sansar Chand (late 18th cent.).

1. Other Pahari schools: Basohli, Guler, Chamba, Mandi, Kullu, Garhwal.
2. Rajput style refers to Rajasthani schools of the plains.

Short trick: Hills → Pahari → Kangra (Sansar Chand).

Concept: In April 1819 John Smith, an officer of the Madras Army, stumbled upon the caves while hunting a tiger – the first recorded modern visitor (he scratched his name in Cave 10).

1. James Fergusson described them later (1843).
2. Robert Gill copied the paintings in oil (1844–63).

Short trick: 1819 – John Smith – tiger hunt – Cave 10.

Concept: Each rasa arises from its permanent emotion (sthayi bhava) – Bharata’s Natyashastra.

1. Rati (love) → Shringar (iv).
2. Utsah (energy) → Veer (i).
3. Krodh (anger) → Raudra (ii).
4. Jugupsa (disgust) → Vibhatsa (iii).

Short trick: Rati-Shringar, Utsah-Veer, Krodh-Raudra, Jugupsa-Vibhatsa.

Concept: ‘The Ideals of Indian Art’ (1911) is by E.B. Havell.

1. Coomaraswamy wrote ‘The Dance of Shiva’ (1918), ‘Rajput Painting’ (1916), ‘Introduction to Indian Art’ (1923), ‘History of Indian and Indonesian Art’ (1927).

Short trick: Ideals → Havell (see Q43).

Concept: The sentence ‘the idea of beauty is the fundamental idea of everything’ is from the German aesthetician K.W.F. Solger (1780–1819), a follower of Schelling.

1. It is known to most readers because Leo Tolstoy quotes it in his survey of aesthetic theories in ‘What is Art?’ (1897, ch. III) – but he quotes it as Solger’s view, not his own; Tolstoy himself defines art as the transmission of feeling.
2. Croce – art is intuition-expression; Aristotle – art is imitation (mimesis); Ruskin – truth to nature.
3. Since the real author (Solger) is not among the options, no option is correct as printed — Tolstoy (C) only reports Solger's view, so the question is treated as a bonus.

Short trick: Solger’s line, found in Tolstoy’s ‘What is Art?’.

Concept: For Plato (Republic, Book X) art is an imitation of an imitation – ‘twice removed from truth’ – so he condemned it and kept poets out of his ideal state.

1. Aristotle later defended imitation as natural and educative.
2. Shankuk (Indian) gave ‘anumitivada’ of rasa; Hegel and Kant are idealist aestheticians.

Short trick: Plato: art = copy of copy → bad.