Maharana Jagat Singh Hawks for Cranes
Not on view
This spectacular panoramic vista of the Mewar landscape depicts a royal hunting party in a series of consecutive vignettes, creating a continuous narrative. The aerial perspective, reflecting the plunging views of terrain offered from many Rajput forts, was an innovation of the Mewar school, perhaps combined here with a new awareness of European cartography. The rays of golden sun—the insignia that Rajput princes displayed on their standards—add a surreal if somewhat celestial dimension to the composition. This painting is remarkable for its complex topography, differentiated with imaginatively devised pictorial devices—hillocks, streams, fields—each deployed to create a landscape of the imagination. The large scale of the work is typical of mid-eighteenth-century Mewar painting, as is the likelihood that multiple artists worked on it in a palace studio environment.
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