Maharana Raj Singh hunting at night, Mewar, circa third quarter 18th century

gouache with gold on paper, green borders, inscriptions on verso in nagari script identifying Maharana Raj Singh hunting as the subject, Mewar inventory numbers 234, 302/1/42

Colours strong, some very minor hairline creases, very few flakes (to feet of woman and animals notably), small tear to left-hand edge with associated repair, some overpainting to border, reverse with old stain mark, ink and pencil markings, as viewed.
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This atmospheric scene of hunting at night has inscriptions on the reverse identifying the subject as Maharana Raj Singh hunting. It is not clear whether it refers to Raj Singh I (r.1652-80), a long-reigning monarch famous for his martial exploits and chivalry whose appearance in other portraits is similar to the figure here (e.g.Topsfield Udaipur, p.111, nos.73-76), or Raj Singh II (r.1754-61) whose face in most portraits looks rather different (e.g. ibid, p.197, fig.178) and who was an unpopular ruler. However, the painting itself was probably executed in the third quarter of the eighteenthth century, during or soon after the reign of Raj Singh II, and one of the inscriptions on the reverse may provide a date equivalent to 1774 AD (1831 VS).

The maharana is dressed in a leaf-skirt in the manner of Bhil tribesmen, a trope that often appears in night time hunting scenes in Indian painting. The composition here, with the quarry illuminated by a lamp held by a Bhil assistant, the hunter loosing his arrows from the darkness behind the lamp, and an attendant cooking the meat from earlier victims over a fire nearby, is also repeated frequently in Indian painting. The figure of the maharana is shown considerably larger than the attendants, as befits his status, and the distant animals are diminutive and all of approximately the same size, whether a tiger, a deer or a hare.