MEWAR, RAJASTHAN, INDIA, CIRCA 1705-15

This extraordinary painting is about as close to the style of Mughal Painting as the artists of Mewar ever worked. The subject is one that was developed in the Mughal court, a very good example of which is a painting of a nobleman (more recently identified as Allahverdi Khan) out hawking dating from around 1660 that is in the Johnson Album in the British Library. Toby must have been working on that painting at the time that he purchased this example, (Toby Falk and Mildred Archer, Indian Miniatures in the India Office Library, Sotheby Parke Bernet, London, 1981, no.103, ill.p.410). In that work we see the hawk on the falconer’s wrist poised to be unleashed at the four flying ducks, but it depicts a single moment in time, unlike the current version.

The subject remained popular for a considerable period at the Mughal court. A spectacular example depicting Muhammad Shah was recently acquired for the National Museums of Scotland (inv.no. V.2021.36) and a similar slightly later painting was sold in our New York rooms 19 June 2019, lot 258. All show the huntsmen on the left while the cranes, pursued by their falcons, try to escape out of the top right hand corner. The subject reached the court in Udaipur relatively early. It is thought that a considerable number of Mughal paintings, especially portraits, entered the Mewar royal collection at the beginning of the 18^th century, during the reign of Amar Singh (r.1698-1710), probably a gift from Sawai Jai Singh of Amber. A painting of Maharana Amar Singh, painted by the Stipple Master circa 1705, now in the National Gallery of Art in Melbourne, Victoria (inv.no. AS73-1980), shows a similar subject but on this occasion the central figure is clearly the Maharana himself. The proportions are typical, the royal figure placed centrally, the hill behind specifically designed to give him additional space; the whole composition dominated by the human figures.

The present painting includes figures that in their proportions are clearly Mewar, but the overall composition is far closer to the Mughal style, and the luxuriant verdant greens of the landscape exceed the greens of the Mughal originals. Various elements are directly imported from the Mughal original, such as the lions lying in the reeds which are seen in an image of Shah Jahan Hunting Lions at Burhanpur by Dawlat, (f.220 from the Padshahnama now in the British Royal Collection RCIN 1005025.au) and also a single Lion at Rest depicted by Mansur in around 1585 now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv.no.1985.221). The greater naturalism of the landscape is also typically Mughal as is the drawing and variously coloured rocks, many with a purplish tone. The small village in the upper right-hand corner is directly imported (as are similar villages are in the background of Amar Singh’s version already noted) but the scale of the human figures within the landscape shows none of the perspective that one might expect in a Mughal painting; the figures in the background are larger than those in the boat relatively forward in the painting. One of the great artistic effects of this painting is the intense black of the lake which gives the whole composition a particular intensity. As an aside, the structure in the lower right-hand margin appears to be the dam that contains the lake; could it be the relatively recently (1680s) constructed dam which created the Fateh Singh Lake in Udaipur? The landscape with indented shoreline however is more reminiscent of the southern edges of Lake Pichola which had been constructed in the 14^th century.

A Mewar painting dating from 1710-1715 showing Shah Jahan Hunting Blackbuck with Trained Cheetahs is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv.no.2019.445.2). The catalogue entry comments on the unusual feature of a hunting scene of Shah Jahan, who had been dead for sixty years, being commemorated. The figures on that painting, while similar in pose to those here, are somehow heavier and stockier than ours, while the landscape is far flatter, all the tonality being much more to the pastel shades. The present painting is an example of a very similar subject, but in this case both in colour and drawing far closer to the imperial Mughal paintings that it actively recalls.