Best paintings under ₹50K on Rooftop: 7 original artworks to buy

Lado Bai was working as a construction labourer when the artist Jagdish Swaminathan saw the murals she had painted on stone and walls. He was a co-founder of Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal, and with his guidance she moved to paper and canvas. One of her paintings is on this list. The best paintings under ₹50K on Rooftop include her work and six more, by Baiga, Gond, Bhil and Pichwai painters. At this budget the paintings also get bigger. Under ₹10,000, nothing we picked was longer than 25 inches on any side. Here, one Gond canvas stands 52 inches tall.

What ₹50K buys in Indian art

Size is the first thing you notice. Most works here measure two to three feet on the long side. One is under two feet, and one runs past four.

Canvas arrives too. Four of the seven are acrylic on canvas, which can hang without glass. Two are on paper and one is on cloth.

You also start buying from painters with long records. Gariba Singh Tekam was encouraged to paint by Jangarh Singh Shyam. Suresh Kumar Dhurve had a solo show of 35 works at Bharat Bhavan in 2007.

Some things stay the same. Every work still ships unframed. Every listing shows a single piece, and the artist still earns a royalty on the sale.

How this list is ordered

The list opens with a single tiger and closes on a whole village at a festival. In between, the crowd grows with each entry.

This matters more than it sounds. A painting with one large animal reads from across a room. A painting with dozens of small figures asks you to stand close. Decide how far away you will usually be, and you will know which end of the list to start from.

The paintings

1. Baiga Tiger by Roopa Bai

One animal takes up the whole sheet. Roopa Bai paints the tiger bright yellow and covers its body in flowers and curling lines. Behind it, the ground fills with orange, pink and blue, crowded with dewdrops, leaves, grass, coils and flowers. The tiger stays calm in the middle of all that busy ground.

For the Baiga, the tiger guards the forest and links the living to their ancestors. Jodhaiya Bai, the Padma Shri Baiga painter, often painted Bageswar, the tiger god who keeps wild boars and wolves off Baiga land. Baiga painting began on mud walls painted for rituals and festivals. Roopa Bai's other subjects include the Dhignaa, a rangoli pattern made for religious occasions.

Hang it where you can see it from the far side of a room. The end wall of a corridor works well.

2. A Couple of Black Elephants by Gariba Singh Tekam

Two elephants stand face to face on a yellow ground. Their bodies are black and covered in rows of white dots. Their ears open out in blue, green and pink. That is all there is, and the painting needs nothing more. Black on yellow is about as strong as contrast gets, so the pair holds its own even on a busy wall.

Gariba Singh Tekam was born in 1976 into the Pradhan Gond community. He is the youngest brother of the painters Narmada Singh Tekam and Kala Bai, and Jangarh Singh Shyam encouraged him to paint for a living. Across his work he repeats a three-line pattern, which he traces to the trishul. He now teaches younger painters.

Two animals meeting face to face make a good gift for a couple's new home.

3. Tree of Life & Human by Lado Bai

A pink deer runs across the paper, and its antlers keep growing until they become a tree. Pink branches spread out, tipped with yellow and red leaves. Dark birds sit in them, and a larger bird with a pink ring round its eye rests near the base. A tree of life usually stands rooted in the ground. Lado Bai puts hers on the back of a running animal.

Bhil painting is built from dots. Lado Bai places hers in waves and zigzags, and that is why her animals seem to move. She was born in 1954 in Badi Bawadi village in Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh, and has painted since childhood. She married young and went to work on construction sites, and it was there that Swaminathan found her murals.

This is the smallest work here, so give it a wall you walk up to. A bedroom or a study suits it.

4. Birds in the Forest by Suresh Kumar Dhurve

Look at the shape before the subject. This canvas is almost three times as tall as it is wide. A tree climbs its full height, and birds fill the branches, every leaf and feather marked out with dots and fine lines.

Birds are Suresh Kumar Dhurve's subject. He grew up in Patangarh, and as a boy he learned to tell birds apart by their calls. When Jangarh Singh Shyam encouraged him to paint, birds were the first thing he put on canvas. His later paintings often drop colour for black and white. This one keeps a full, bold palette.

A tall, narrow canvas fits the walls other paintings cannot use, such as the strip between two windows, the side of a staircase or a narrow hall. His much larger Turtle's Tale of Life appears in our list of paintings under ₹1 lakh.

5. Pichwai Makhan Chori Painting

Krishna is stealing butter again. Gopis, cows, peacocks and his playful friends crowd around him in a pastoral scene lit in the soft tones of sunrise. The jewellery is picked out in fine detail, and the figures move in a steady rhythm across the cloth.

Pichwai painting comes from Nathdwara in Rajasthan. The finest Pichwais still hang inside the Shrinathji temple there as backdrops for ritual. This work keeps the tradition's own surface, cloth, and paints it with natural stone colours.

Note one difference before you buy. This is the only painting here that is made to order, and Rooftop confirms the lead time after you send an enquiry. A dining room or a puja room suits the subject.

6. Bhil Cultural Traditions I by Yashpal Baranda

Yashpal Baranda splits the canvas into compartments, and each one holds its own scene of Bhil life. You read it one box at a time, the way you would read a page. Warm reds and earthy oranges run through the panels.

Put it next to Lado Bai's deer and you can see how far one technique can stretch. Both painters work in Bhil dots. Lado Bai uses them to make animals run. Baranda spreads them evenly across figures and grounds alike, so the whole surface has one fine texture and nothing jumps ahead of the story.

The numeral in the title marks this as the first work in a series on Bhil customs. Hang it in a reading corner, where someone sits long enough to go through the panels one by one.

7. Village Celebration by Siya Shyam

Here is the crowd. A Gond village has stopped work for a festival, and its people dance in rows across a bright yellow ground. Their bodies are packed with Gond pattern. The poses repeat from figure to figure, so each row keeps a beat, the way a line of dancers holds a rhythm together.

The yellow does two jobs. It reads as sunlight and festival at once, and it pushes the dark, patterned figures forward so each dancer stands out. Up close you can follow a single dancer. From the doorway, the yellow still carries.

It belongs in a living room or an entrance, somewhere people gather. A painting of a party works best where parties happen.

Paper, canvas or cloth

Surface	Paintings on this list	What it needs at home
Paper	Baiga Tiger, Tree of Life & Human	A frame with glass. Keep it flat and dry.
Canvas	A Couple of Black Elephants, Birds in the Forest, Bhil Cultural Traditions I, Village Celebration	Can hang without glass. All four ship unframed, so ask a framer how to mount them.
Cloth	Pichwai Makhan Chori Painting	A frame with glass, away from damp walls.

How to choose your painting at this budget

Start with distance. If the wall faces a sofa across the room, pick from the top of the list. If it sits beside a chair or a bed, pick from the bottom.

Then measure. Cut newspaper to the painting's size and tape it up for a day. The sizes jump at this budget, and 52 inches looks very different on a wall than it does on a tape measure.

Budget for framing before you buy. A 36-inch canvas costs a lot more to frame than a 14-inch sheet.

Think about neighbours, too. Gond and Bhil paintings are both dense with pattern, and two of them on one wall tend to fight. We would give each its own wall, or pair one with something plain.

Buying on Rooftop

Six of these seven are single originals, and each listing shows one piece left, so once a work sells it is gone. The Pichwai is made to order. Orders cannot be cancelled and items cannot be returned, so check the size against your wall first. Rooftop ships with insurance, every artwork comes with a certificate of authenticity, and the artist earns a royalty on the sale. Prices on the site can change, so confirm the current price on the listing before you order. Every listing also has an enquiry button if you want to ask about a work before buying.

Caring for these paintings

For the Gond canvases, Rooftop's Gond listings advise a cool, dry spot away from direct sunlight and moisture, a frame with UV-protective glass, and a gentle dusting with a soft brush or cloth.

The Baiga tiger needs the same, and Rooftop's Baiga listings add one more rule. Avoid touching the painted surface.

For Bhil works, a soft dry cloth is enough for dusting. Keep harsh cleaning products well away.

The Pichwai listing gives no care note. Treat it like paper. Frame it under glass, keep it out of sun and damp, and never fold it.

Learn the forms behind the paintings

Rooftop runs online art courses in several of these forms, including Gond with Venkat Raman Singh Shyam, Pichwai with Rajaram Sharma and Bhil with Padma Shri Bhuri Bai. The Pichwai Art Wiki covers Nathdwara and the temple tradition behind the cloth. If you want to start smaller, our paintings under ₹10K begin with Warli on cow dung and Paitkar scroll scenes from Jharkhand, and our paintings under ₹25K sit between that list and this one. When you want more wall, the ₹1 lakh list goes up to a five-foot Gond canvas.

Count the figures before you buy. One tiger or a whole village, the number you want to live with tells you where on this list to stop.