An Elephant Combat

This dramatic elephant fight epitomizes the Hada Master style, in which the action is so intense that it threatens to burst from the page. The two elephants are locked in frenzied battle; a mahout leaps for his life, and footmen with long shafted lances goad the combatants into action and scurry for safety. The French traveler and gem trader François Bernier witnessed such an event in 1663, describing the mud wall erected to separate the animals, seen here being scaled by the more aggressive elephant, who “attacks his opponent and putting him to flight, pursues and fastens on him with such obstinacy that the animals can be separated only by means of cherkys or fireworks, which are made to explode between them.” The footman at lower left appears to be doing precisely as Bernier described. The vitality and immediacy of this drawing strongly suggest that it was drawn from life, the artist perhaps sharing the high (and safe) vantage point enjoyed by the Rao for viewing this dangerous sport.

About the Artist

Hada Master and the Kota School
Presumably trained in Bundi, Rajasthan, and active in Kota soon after 1631 until the 1660s

In 1631, the Mughal government permitted the sub region of Kota to secede from Bundi and become an independent state. Some artists in the Bundi atelier appear to have taken the opportunity for advancement offered by a new ruler seeking to establish his cultural credentials and moved to Kota. Both Rao Madho Singh (r. 1631–48) and his successor Rao Jagat Singh were enthusiastic patrons and actively recruited painters from Bundi. As the Bundi atelier was strongly influenced by the Chunar Ragamala artists who appear to have had imperial or subimperial Mughal training, so elements of the courtly style were introduced to Bundi and thence disseminated to other court workshops in the Rajasthan region. Kota absorbed and developed the stylistic traits of the Bundi school most directly.

A leading hand at the new Kota school has been named, by Milo Beach, as the Hada Master, distinguished by figure types and characteristically robust elephants. Through his highly original work, in which complex landscape compositions were populated by hunters and hunted, the Hada Master appears to have created a lasting vogue for dramatic hunting scenes and exciting elephant fights. All are distinguished by their theatricality, drama, and emphasis on action. Tiger hunts and raging elephants, locked in combat or running amok, were favorite subjects. Such themes became the hallmark of the Kota school thereafter, persisting into the nineteenth century.

Ragamalas also became an established topic in Rajasthani painting in Kota, as is witnessed by several sets of paintings, which, in their formulaic diagonal architectural recessions into space, perpetuate the Mughal style that migrated to Rajasthan courtesy of the Chunar Ragamala artists. A singular masterwork of the Hada Master is the portrait of his patron Rao Jagat Singh relaxing with female attendants in a lush water garden. The combination of an aerial view of the garden’s grid plan and the setting of figures and flowers in profile within it sets up a pictorial ambiguity that enlivens the composition. This painting belongs to the last decade of the Hada Master’s known career.