Wonder of the Age: Master Painters of India, 1100–1900
by John Guy and Jorrit Britschgi
Metropolitan Museum of Art/ Yale University Press, 224 pp., $45.00
Masters of Indian Painting, 1100–1900
edited by Milo C. Beach, Eberhard Fischer, and B.N. Goswamy
Artibus Asiae, two volumes, 839 pp., $200.00
One morning in 1740, a thin young man could be seen heading down the steep cobbled road leading from the Kashmir Gate of the Punjabi hilltown of Guler, and making for the banks of the fast-running river Ravi far below. Nainsukh was just short of thirty, with a slightly hesitant expression, buckteeth, and a downy mustache. He had just been appointed as court miniature painter at the neighboring Himalayan princedom of Jasrota, and in his baggage were the sketchbooks, albums, boxes of pens,…