page_title: Nainsukh
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Nainsukh / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Nainsukh self-portrait, [1]
context_page_description: Nainsukh was an Indian painter. He was the younger son of the painter Pandit Seu and, like his older brother Manaku of Guler, was an important practitioner of Pahari painting, and has been called "one of the most original and brilliant of Indian painters".
  Around 1740 he left the family workshop in Guler and moved to Jasrota, where he painted most of his works for the local Rajput ruler Mian Zorowar Singh and his son Balwant Singh until the latter's death in 1763. This is the best known and documented phase of his career. Through his adaptation of elements of Mughal painting, he was a central force in the development of Pahari painting in the middle of the eighteenth century, bringing Mughal elements into what had been a school mainly concerned with Hindu religious subjects. In his final phase at Basholi, from about 1765 until his death in 1778, Nainsukh returned to religious subject matter, but retaining his stylistic innovations. By the end of his career, with an active family workshop continuing his style, he was probably not executing the works himself anymore, but leaving them to his children and nephew as his artistic heirs.
context_section_description: Nainsukh was born c. 1710 in Guler in modern Himachal Pradesh, India, then the capital of the pocket Guler State in the far north of India, in the foothills of the Himalayas.  Here his father subsequently established a painting workshop. Along with his brother who was around ten years older than him, he was trained by his father in all aspects of painting from an early age. At this very time, examples of Moghul painting were increasingly coming to the valleys of the west Himalayas, and it seems probable that Nainsukh came into contact with the works of Mughul painters early on. Possibly he had worked at a Mughal court, where Hindu artists were common.
  Unlike his stylistically more conservative brother Manaku, who remained in Guler and closely conformed to the style of his father Seu, Nainsukh introduced many of the novel elements of Moghul painting into the traditional Pahari style employed by his family.  His early work is very poorly documented, and his distinctive style emerges almost fully formed in the next phase of his career.
caption: Self-portrait at the age of 20
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