AN ILLUSTRATION DEPICTING MAHARANA JAGAT SINGH II RECEIVING TWO SISODIA NOBLEMEN

Maharana Jagat Singh (b.1709-1751) of Udaipur sits on a giant floral carpet, nimbate with a radiant golden halo, smoking a hookah, likely receiving his brother Nathji and another family member who sit formally at his feet in a private darbar. The white (crescent and dot) symbol of the Sisodia dynasty lineage hovers above. He is being fanned by an attendant waving a curiously feathery chowrie more as a symbol of royal authority than a functioning flywhisk. Though not inscribed on its recto the present work may have been painted by the artist Siyaji or another close colleague in the royal atelier, whose artists often worked in close proximity to each other and often in concert on the same paintings, thereby making individual artists' attribution complicated.

For another Udaipur work from Maharana Jagat Singh’s royal workshop which has been attributed to Siyaji based upon a translated inscription see Darielle Mason, ed., Intimate worlds: Indian Paintings from the Alvin O. Bellak Collection, Philadelphia, 2001, cat. 6, pp. 150-51.

For further reference see A. Topsfield, Paintings From Rajasthan, Victoria, 1980, cat. 111-112, pp. 92-104.