Maharao Umed Singh hunting tigers

Object Details

• Artist

  Hans Raj Joshi (1750-1799)

• School/Tradition

  Kota school

• Inscriptions

  Recto: in devanagari script: maharaja dhiraja maharaja maharao raja sri umed singhji bahadur his

  Courageous king of kings, great king Umed Singh

  Verso: in devanagari script: samvat 1844 vasakih sudi 14, hitvarah din ki jp dim (?) kul thak ajai nahan ghoghari mari…Joshi Hans Raj chuterako, ji ho

  Samvat 1844 (1787 CE), fourteenth day of Caisakh, Sunday…killed the…animals.

  Painting by Hans Raj Joshi

  Painting by Hans Raj Joshi

• Label

  Royal hunts were symbolically important expressions of kingship within the Ancient Near East, Persia and India. Beginning around 1660, artists in Kota began creating extraordinary images of rulers hunting game, which through to the mid-eighteenth century deployed calligraphic contour lines to render animals with great vivacity in highly textured landscapes. This later hunt scene deploys solid blocks of color - lavender, salmon, orange and teal - that play off the textured sage greens of the forest. The composition demands that the viewer search through the foliage for a tiger represented multiple times in a way that perhaps evokes the act of looking for game in the jungle. On the right, a tiger mauls one of the servants of the hunt. At top center, a nobleman, probably the powerful Zalim Singh, shoots from a a hunting platform at the tiger. The tiger subsequently appears on the left, charging towards Umed Singh, with white halo and dressed in camouflage green, who shoots from a hunting platform. Visible above and below the tiger is the lattice-work enclosure that was built to drive game towards the ruler.

  The knobby lavender rocks, which appear in other Kota hunt scenes, suggest that the location is the hunting grounds of Kaithun.

• Provenance

  To 1971

  Indian Arts Palace, New Delhi [1]

  From 1971 to 2001

  Ralph Benkaim (1914-2001), purchased from Indian Arts Palace, New Delhi in December 1971 [2]

  From 2001 to 2018

  Catherine Glynn Benkaim, Beverly Hills, California, by inheritance from Ralph Benkaim in 2001

  From 2018

  Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, partial gift and purchase from Catherine Glynn Benkaim

  Notes:

  [1] According to information from Catherine Glynn Benkaim.

  [2] See note 1.

• Collection

  National Museum of Asian Art Collection

• Exhibition History

  Life at court: Art for India's Rulers, 16th-19th centuries (November 20, 1985 to May 11, 1986)

• Previous custodian or owner

  Indian Arts Palace

  Ralph and Catherine Benkaim

  Catherine Glynn Benkaim

• Origin

  Kota, Rajasthan state, India

• Credit Line

  Purchase and partial gift from the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection — funds provided by the Friends of the National Museum of Asian Art

• Type

  Painting

• Restrictions and Rights

  CC0 - Creative Commons (CC0 1.0)

  This image is in the public domain (free of copyright restrictions). You can copy, modify, and distribute this work without contacting the Smithsonian. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's Terms of Use page.

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Keep Exploring

• Related Resources

  collections.si.edu

• Date

  1780s

• Name

  Indian Arts Palace, Benkaim, Ralph and Catherine, Benkaim, Catherine Glynn

• Place

  Kota, Rajasthan state, India

• Topic

  South Asian and Himalayan Art, Art, Hunting, Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection, Portraits, Tiger

• Culture

  Himalayan peoples, South Asians

• Object Type

  Paintings