UPHESC Assistant Professor Drawing & Painting 2025 PYQs

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.

Concept: In ‘The Meaning of Art’ Herbert Read analyses a picture into five basic elements.

1. Line, form (mass), space, light and shade (tone), and colour.
2. Other writers add texture and so count six or seven, but Read’s list is five.

Short trick: Read’s 5: Line–Form–Space–Light-shade–Colour.

Concept: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement, 1790): ‘The beautiful is that which, apart from concepts, is represented as the object of a universal satisfaction.’

1. Key Kantian ideas: disinterested pleasure, universality, ‘purposiveness without purpose’.
2. Hegel – beauty as sensuous shining of the Idea; Collingwood – art as expression of emotion.

Short trick: Universal + without concept + disinterested = Kant.

Concept: Among the options only ‘Samarangana Sutradhara’ (Raja Bhoja, 11th cent.) is a treatise on art; its painting chapters describe rasa-drishti and rasas in detail.

1. The classic source of rasa is Bharata’s Natyashastra, but it is not given here.
2. Mahabharata and Gita are epic/philosophy; Discovery of India is Nehru’s history.

Short trick: Bhoja’s Samarangana = architecture + painting + rasa-drishti.

Concept: The Parthenon (447–432 BCE, Athens) was built under Pericles with Phidias as overall supervisor and sculptor; Ictinus and Callicrates were the architects.

1. Phidias made the gold-ivory Athena Parthenos and directed the frieze/pediment sculptures.
2. Among the options only Phidias is linked with it.

Short trick: Pericles ordered, Phidias supervised, Ictinus–Callicrates designed.

Concept: The painted limestone bust of Queen Nefertiti (wife of Akhenaten) was made by sculptor Thutmose c.1345 BCE at Amarna, Egypt; now in Neues Museum, Berlin.

1. It belongs to the naturalistic Amarna period of Egyptian art.

Short trick: Nefertiti – Thutmose – Amarna – Berlin.

Concept: Greek art is usually studied in four periods.

1. Geometric (c.900–700 BCE) – geometric pottery.
2. Archaic (c.700–480 BCE) – kouros, kore, ‘archaic smile’.
3. Classical (c.480–323 BCE) – Parthenon, Phidias, Polykleitos.
4. Hellenistic (323–31 BCE) – Laocoön, Nike of Samothrace.

Short trick: G-A-C-H = 4.

Concept: Egyptian art served the afterlife – pyramids, mummies, tomb paintings, ka-statues and the Book of the Dead – so it is called the ‘art of the dead’.

1. Belief that the soul (ka) needs an image and a body to survive led to durable tomb art.

Short trick: Pyramid + mummy + tomb = Egypt.

Concept: Rococo (18th-century France) – light, ornamental, playful aristocratic art.

1. Watteau (fête galante), Boucher and Fragonard (‘The Swing’) are its leading painters.
2. Goya (Spain) is a court painter and forerunner of Romanticism (‘The Third of May 1808’).

Short trick: W-B-F = Rococo; Goya = Romantic Spain.

Concept: Catacombs are underground burial galleries of Rome where early Christians (2nd–4th cent.) painted symbols and scenes – Good Shepherd, fish, Orant.

1. They are the first examples of Christian painting, made before Christianity was legalised (313 CE).

Short trick: Catacomb = Early Christian Rome.

Concept: The Romanesque fresco ‘Martyrdom of St. Lawrence’ (early 12th cent.) is in the chapel of the Cluniac priory at Berzé-la-Ville, belonging to Cluny Abbey (France).

1. Its Byzantine-influenced style reflects the art of Cluny.
2. Saint-Lazare (Autun) is famous for Gislebertus’ sculpted Last Judgement; Saint-Pierre (Moissac) for its portal sculpture; San Pietro al Monte (Civate) for its Apocalypse frescoes.

Short trick: Berzé-la-Ville (Cluny priory) → St. Lawrence on the gridiron.