A Raja hunting lions outside a palace, Kotah, mid-19th century, brush drawing heightened...

A Raja hunting lions outside a palace, Kotah, mid-19th century, brush drawing heightened with colour, inscribed on the front: bim sigh sri budhi ka ma.raja ku. pucch? (picture? of Bhim Singh Maharajakumara of Bundi) and repeated above the pavilion, laid down on card, drawing 19.4 x 43.6cm., overall 21 x 45.4cm.

Provenance: American Private collection

The prince is seated on a European type of chair in an ornate pavilion in a lotus pond outside a palace using a bow and arrows to hunt lions and other animals. Two ladies stand behind him with muskets. A lion is charging towards him as he takes aim. Other lions are in the background and terrified deer, blackbucks, boars and sloth bears run across the foreground where a dead lion is already splayed out with its paws in the air.

The raja bears a resemblance to Maharaja Ram Singh II of Jaipur, although the landscape and lively animals look as if done by a Kotah artist (e.g. Losty 2010, no. 22), but the inscription is little help. Bim or rather Bhim Singh prince of Bundi would seem to be a reference to Kunwar Bhim Singh a younger son of Maharao Chattar Sal of Bundi (1632-58), whose grandson Anirudh Singh was adopted into the main line when sons failed. He succeeded in 1682. Ladies took part in the great hunts of lions in Rajasthan, as in the painting of ladies hunting lions from Kotah about 1810 in the Cleveland Museum (Leach 1986, no. 77). A sketch related to that painting is also in the Cleveland Museum (ibid., no. 78) that is very much in the same style as our drawing with lively animals and patches of colour. These seem to be artistic thoughts rather than preparatory drawings. No doubt the intention here is partly satirical as in many of these Kotah drawings of the 19th century (see Archer 1959, figs. 43, 50-52; Welch and Masteller 2004, nos. 54-60), poking fun at a raja who prefers to hunt from the comfort of his own palace rather than take to the jungle as in many earlier Kotah hunting scenes.

Literature

Archer, W.G., Indian Painting in Bundi and Kotah, HMSO, London, 1959

Leach, L.Y., Indian Miniature Paintings and Drawings: the Cleveland Museum of Art Catalogue of Oriental Art, Part One, The Cleveland Museum of Art., Cleveland, 1986

Losty, J.P., Indian Miniatures from the James Ivory Collection, Francesca Galloway, London, 2010

Welch, S.C., and Masteller, K., From Mind, Heart and Hand: Persian, Turkish and Indian Drawings from the Stuart Cary Welch Collection, Yale University Press and Harvard University Art Museums, New Haven, etc., 2004