Jhilai, a feudal state of Jaipur, was small but important, since its rulers were next in succession to the throne of Jaipur if the main line proved to be without issue. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a significant but little-known style of painting, probably representing the work of a single artist, seems to have flourished in Jhilai. The strong colors favored by the Jaipur school are here tempered into sober fields of black, gray, and green, and the classical balance typical of that school gives way to a more mannered treatment. The Jhilai artist has created a dynamic composition of taut forms and bold surface patterns; its elements, both distant and close-up, are described with crystalline clarity.
