Raja Sujan Singh of Bikaner smoking a hookah

Object Details

• Artist

  Ustad Ahmad (active early 18th century)

• School/Tradition

  Bikaner school

• Marks

  Verso: Purple stamp of the personal collection of the Maharaja of Bikaner 1963, [dated notation entered by hand on] 17.8.64; inventory no. 5317

  Khet Singh

  Khet Singh

• Inscriptions

  Verso: in Nagari: samvat 1803 miti bhadva(n) sudi 5 s(h)abi maharaja sujan singhji ri kam uste ahmad s(h)ha muhamad ro

  Samvat 1803 bright half of the month of Bhadon, 5th day, likeness of Maharaja Sujan Singh. Work of the Master (Ustad) Ahmad, (son of) Shah Mahmud

  Inspection date: Sunday 10th August 1746

  Inspection date: Sunday 10th August 1746

• Label

  Raja Sujan Singh of Bikaner (born 1690, reigned 1700 -- 1735) enjoys a hookah from a terrace that overlooks a flowering garden and a misty landscape. The painterly sky, with swathes of gold wash near the trees and dilute washes in the sky, skillfully evokes hazy light. The painting's palette, its atmospheric landscape, and the distant white city on the hill point to the role that Deccani painting played in transforming Bikaner painting from a brightly-colored provincial idiom to a highly refined aesthetic in the late seventeenth century.

  The painting's pastel tones of lavender, pink, and salmon, its soft greens and diffused mauves, and the distant white city on the hill can be most directly traced to painting from the Deccani court of Bijapur.[1] Although Bikaner rulers had long ties to the Deccan, having served there as Mughal generals from the 1570s, Sujan Singh's father, Maharaja Anup Singh (r. 1674-98), became the governor of Bijapur following Emperor Aurangzeb's conquest of the kingdom. That close contact with Bijapur becomes visible in the folios of a magnificent Bhagavata Purana that Anup Singh commissioned.[2] The Sackler's superb folio from Anup Singh's Bhagavata Purana (c.1690-1700, S2018.1.46) demonstrates the synthesis of styles achieved by Bikaner paintings at the end of the seventeenth century, as well as the emotional depths that they instilled in landscapes bathed in golden light. Sujan Singh's portrait extends the synthesis of his father's sacred narrative into the genre of royal portraiture.

• Provenance

  From ca. 1715 to 1964

  Personal collection of the Maharaja of Bikaner

  From ? to 2003

  Francesca Galloway, London [1]

  From 2003 to 2018

  Catherine Glynn Benkaim, Beverly Hills, California, purchased from Francesca Galloway, London in 2003

  From 2018

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

  Notes:

  [1] We were unable to trace the painting between 1964, when it certainly was in Bikaner, and 2003, when it certainly was in London.

• Collection

  National Museum of Asian Art Collection

• Previous custodian or owner

  Maharaja of Bikaner (Bikaner, Rajasthan state, India)

  Francesca Galloway, Ltd. (established 1992)

  Catherine Glynn Benkaim

• Origin

  Bikaner, 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

  Usage Conditions Apply

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Keep Exploring

• Related Resources

  collections.si.edu

• Date

  1710s, 1720s

• Name

  Galloway, Francesca Marigold, Benkaim, Catherine Glynn, Maharaja of Bikaner

• Place

  Bikaner, Rajasthan state, India

• Topic

  South Asian and Himalayan Art, Landscapes, Art, Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection, Portraits, Attendant, Smoking

• Culture

  Himalayan peoples, South Asians

• Object Type

  Paintings