Observe the image and answer the following question.
Which school of painting does the painting in the image belong to?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Company School of Painting
The painting is Ghulam Ali Khan’s Group of Courtesans.
Option (1) Bengal School of Art — Incorrect. The Bengal School came later with Abanindranath Tagore and sought an Indian style, not European close observation.
Option (2) Mughal School of Painting — Incorrect. Mughal miniatures are a traditional style. This painting mixes tradition with the European habit of close observation.
Option (3) Pahari School of Painting — Incorrect. Pahari miniatures also belong to the traditional practice that relied on memory and rule books.
Option (4) Company School of Painting — Correct. Local artists mixed their traditional style with European close observation for English patrons. This mixture is the Company School.
Note: This topic was not named in the CUET 2026 syllabus, but it was part of the NCERT chapter. In 2025 and 2026, NTA also asked questions on topics in NCERT that the CUET syllabus did not name. So our mocks have questions from every part of the NCERT chapter, to give you enough practice. Read the whole chapter, not only the sub-topics named in the syllabus.
NCERT (2026-27): “Company Painting …To please their new patrons, they had to adapt their traditional way of painting to document the world around them. This meant that they had to rely more on close observation, a striking feature of the European art, rather than memory and rule books, as seen in traditional art. It is this mixture of traditional and European style of painting that came to be known as the Company School of Painting.…”
Ghulam Ali Khan, Group of Courtesans, Company Painting, 1800–1825. San Diego Museum of Art, California, USA |
