MAHARANA ARI SINGH HUNTING WILD BOAR BY THE MASTER ARTIST SHIVA
INDIA, RAJASTHAN, UDAIPUR, DATED 1764
Estimate: £8,000 - £12,000
Auction: 11 June 2025 from 10:00 BST
Description
gouache heightened in gold on paper, depicting the maharana with a drawn bow and arrow, astride his galloping and richly caparisoned black stallion to the rescue of a fallen hunter being attached by an enraged wild boar, the hunter has tumbled head first still holding on to his steel katar and shield in the other hand, the wild boar biting into his arm, whilst two hunting or saluki hounds are biting into the wild boar, on a green ground, inscribed on the reverse in devanagari in two different hands with the name and titles of the Maharana, the subject of the painting, the name of the horse and the name of the painter ‘Shiva’
Dimensions
22.5cm x 40.5cm
Provenance
Mewar Royal Collection, inventory number 3/246.
Spink and Son, London, 1987.
Footnote
No doubt Ari Singh was a splendid horseman and wanted his painters to celebrate his riding skills while providing him with a glittering, heroic context in which to be depicted, rather different from the reality of his wilful and ill-tempered character and the meagre achievements of his turbulent rule. Despite his unpopularity and ruthlessness, Ari Singh presided over a period of abundant painting. When depicted in his public persona, Ari Singh appears most often on horseback. During the first two years of his reign, 1761-1762, his artists produced a spate of equestrian procession scenes, showing him mounted on his favourite stallions with an entourage of up to twenty attendants on foot, in the well-worn convention developed under Sangram Singh (see A. Topsfield, Court Painting at Udaipur: Art under the patronage of the Maharanas of Mewar, 2002, p. 199).
Solitary equestrian portraits were also produced, including spirited studies of the Rana wheeling at speed as he practices horsemanship or galloping beside his boon companion Rupji (see A. Topsfield, Paintings from Rajasthan in the National Gallery of Victoria, 1980, pp. 120 and 123, cat. nos. 170 and 179). In other paintings he is shown shooting wild boar from his horse while out hunting in the hills surrounding Udaipur (see A. Topsfield, op. cit, 2002, p. 201, fig. 182. See also A. Topsfield, op. cit, 1980, p. 121, cat. no. 171. For a similar painting with the artist name as Deva, see op. cit, cat no. 155.
Shiva, the son of Naga and grandson of Bhagvan, was a junior artist at the Mewar court in Udaipur. A painting by Shiva dated 1761 of “Ari Singh practicing horsemanship” is illustrated in Andrew Topsfield, The City Palace Museum Udaipur: Paintings of Mewar Court Life, 1990, p. 54, cat. no. 17. Topsfield also illustrates on p. 53, no. 16, a painting of “Maharana Raj Singh II riding in procession to the Saranesvarji temple”, on which Shiva collaborated with the senior artists Syaji and Sukha.