Inscribed in red with the name of the ruler above each of them; on the verso the obscured stamp of the personal collection of the Maharajas of Bikaner
Provenance:
Bikaner Palace Collection
Sotheby's, London, October 8, 1979, no. 91
Sotheby's, London, Art of Imperial India, October 9, 2013, no. 205
Twelve rulers or princes of Amber and its successor state Jaipur are depicted sitting on their heels round a little fountain in a palace courtyard in front of an elaborately-decorated pavilion. Maharaja Prithvi Raj (1502-1527) is pictured resting against a bolster on a rug in the center. Nine later rulers of the Kacchwaha house of Amber/Jaipur, as well as three princes of some fame who died before their accession, are depicted on either side.
The dating sequence runs in pairs, right to left. They are inscribed as Maharaja Bharmal Singh (1548-1574) and Maharaja Bhagavant Das (1574-1589); Maharaja Man Singh (1589-1614) and Kunwar Jagat Singh (d. 1599); Maharaja Bhau Singh (1614-1621) and Kunvar Maha Singh (d. 1617); Mirza Raja Jai Singh I (1621-1667) and Maharaja Ram Singh (1667-1688); Kunvar Kishan Singh (d. 1682) and Maharaja Bishan Singh (1688-99); and (inscription partly cut off) Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II (1699-1743) and Maharaja Sawai Ishvari Singh (1743-1750).
Such group portraits for Indian royal houses are based on similar ancestral portraits of the Mughal emperors showing their descent from Timur. There are several known versions of this ancestral Jaipur painting, including one in the Man Singh Museum in the Jaipur palace ending, like this painting, with Maharaja Ishvari Singh (Tillotson and Venkateswaran 2016, p. 43). Another closely-related example was at Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, December 15, 1978, no. 128. This version includes very elaborate decoration of the pavilion and a rather curious handling of the normal way to depict a chajja, which is here seen to be going up rather than down. This is occasionally seen in 18th-century paintings and is seemingly caused by the artist’s wish to represent it in the perspective as seen from the viewpoint of the participants in the painting rather than that of the viewer.
J.P. Losty