Pahari Paintings: Art and Stories

An in-depth study of the innovation and range of Pahari painting that draws from one of the greatest collections ever assembled

Artists in the Pahari kingdoms of India's northwest Himalayas produced paintings for religious and courtly purposes from the seventeenth through the nineteenth century. Exhibiting vibrant color and containing distinctive cultural and historical content, these works have long attracted collectors from around the world. This lavishly illustrated volume focuses on a singularly brilliant collection--now split among the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art, and the Cincinnati Art Museum--assembled from the 1960s to the early 2000s by Catherine Glynn Benkaim, a Pahari paintings scholar, and her husband. Foregrounding recent research and fieldwork, scholars show how intervalley mobility and an ancestral village-based artist culture can explain the surprising range of styles seen in paintings from this dramatic, mountainous region. Essays move beyond problematic court attributions and identifications of Mughal influence to reposition the agency of artists and patrons working in collaboration across boundaries of Pahari kingdoms at the forefront of artistic praxis. Many of these paintings are published here for the first time, along with discussions of their more recent histories, full translations of inscriptions, and the collector's personal comments on the collecting of Pahari paintings.

Distributed for the Cleveland Museum of Art

Exhibition Schedule:

Cleveland Museum of Art
(April 19-August 16, 2026)

National Museum of Asian Art, Washington DC
(April 18-July 26, 2026)

Cincinnati Art Museum
(February 6-June 7, 2026)