Inscribed on the verso Rathod Abhai Karanji Durgadasot (‘Abhai Karan Rathor son of Durgadas’)
Provenance:
Terence McInerney, New York, 1984
Paul F. Walter, New York
Christie’s, New York, September 28, 2017, no. 636
After the death of Raja Jaswant Singh of Jodhpur in 1678, Durgadas Rathor (1638- 1718), the son of the raja's chief minister, was the hero who smuggled Ajit Singh, the infant son of the late raja, out of Delhi and kept alive the hopes of the Rathors for the true line of the rajas until Aurangzeb died in 1707. Assuming Durgadas Rathor's son Abhai Karan was born about 1660, his age in this painting makes a date of around 1710-1720 feasible.
The Mughal occupation of Jodhpur itself lasted until Aurangzeb’s death in 1707, when Ajit Singh was formally able to claim his throne and returned with Durgadas to Jodhpur. Few paintings can be reliably attributed to this period of exile, but when painting in Jodhpur started up again its style had changed to a more basically Rajput one, with emphasis on line and color rather than on the compositional subtleties influenced by Mughal art seen under Jasvant Singh. This painting seems one of the earliest of the new style, along with an equestrian portrait of Sonag Champawat of Pali in the collection of the late Kumar Sangram Singh of Nawalgarh (R. Crill, Marwar Painting: a History of the Jodhpur Style, Bombay, 2000, fig. 33).
The hunt takes place against an almost-plain ground with the barest intimation of sky and with a rocky formation in the foreground, to which the boar seems to be heading. Abhai Karan is on a rearing horse as he calmly pushes his spear into the boar’s back, which is already wounded by several arrows and by the hound’s biting of its rear. Three huntsmen on foot surround the horse, none armed with anything more than a katar, useless against a boar. Abhai Karan alone has a bow and a quiver of arrows, so it was he who must have shot the arrows into the boar. Boar hunting is one of the most dangerous of field sports, since the wounded animal is liable to turn at any moment and rend the tormenters with upward thrusts of its fearsome tusks, so the calm insouciance of the huntsmen and their closeness to the prey seem more like a recording of a ritual than an actual event. Nonetheless the artist’s command of line and his elegant composition demand close attention, especially the pleasing counterpoint of human and animal legs. The men and horse all in white relieved only by orange and red details of accoutrements and clothing contrast with the green ground, as do the pink rocks, the grey boar, and the beige hound.
J.P. Losty