AJMER OR MARWAR, RAJASTHAN, NORTH INDIA, CIRCA 1720

A number of paintings in the Jodhpur and Ganerhao style have been produced at Ajmer a state which was under Jodhpur rule in the 1720s. There are mostly portraits of maharajas such as a painting of Ajit Singh with his sons, dated 1721 and now in the Harvard University Art Museums (1995.131; R. Crill, Marwar Painting, A History of the Jodhpur Style,Mumbai, 2009, fig.34, pp.62-63) and another of Padam Singh also dated 1721 in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (IS.12-1978). In our painting, the nobleman wears a short striped white turban secured with a gold-woven band. It is heavily Mughal in style and differs from the heavier and taller turbans seen on contemporaneous and later 18th century Jodhpur painting. Whilst rare, this short turban also appears on an equestrian portrait of Sonag Champawat of Pali, painted circa 1710-20, now kept in a Private Collection – it follows an earlier style as depicted on a 1680 portrait of Maharaja Jaswant Singh in the Kanoria Collection (Crill., op.cit., fig.33, pp.60-61 and fig.27, pp.48-49 ). For a similar example, see the painting of Thakur Madho Singh of Satlana on horseback, sold in Christie’s Mumbai, 15 December 2015, lot 118.