ISARDA OR SAWAR, RAJASTHAN, INDIA, CIRCA 1700-20

A black inscription on the upper left of the verso previously read as "37 hathi (?)" suggests that this painting is the 37th such portrait from a series of elephant studies. A very closely related painting, which may well be from the same series, was sold in Bonhams, New York, 23 September 2021, lot 1220. Both paintings use the same muted palette with the great physical presence of the elephant offset by a light green-washed ground containing just a few sketchily rendered shrubs in the bottom right. Another drawing from the same school is published in Toby Falk, Elephants of Fame and Other Animals in Indian Painting, exhibition catalogue, London, 1987, no. 7. Elephant drawings of this type were originally thought to all come from Sawar but Indar Parischa argued for Isarda as an attribution in "Painting at Sawar and at Isarda in the 17th century," Oriental Art, Autumn, 1982, p.266 and note 25.