visions of mughal india - The Ashmolean Museum

VISIONS OFMUGHAL INDIAfor their disclosure of the artist’s first ideas andworkings. It is also – like so many of his Indianpictures — a work of unusually large size.The most gifted Pahari artist of the mideighteenthcentury was Nainsukh of Guler.For much of his career he worked for theminor nobleman Balwant Singh of Jasrota,and the unusually close understanding thathe developed with his patron is evident in hismany intimate and psychologically revealingstudies of the Raja’s daily life. One of the twoworks in the collection certainly attributableto Nainsukh is the elongated hunting scene,in which Balwant Singh and other nobles onhorseback surround a huge and defiant tiger.Other slightly later works, either by Nainsukhor his close followers, are the Disrobing ofDraupadi, a restrained and elegant rendering ofa famous scene of thwarted sexual humiliationfrom the Mahabharata, set against a boldlystriped durree; and a sensitive fragmentarystudy of some Pahari travellers singing by thewayside. Balwant Singh hunts a tigerGuler, Punjab Hills, c.1750. Attributed to Nainsukh9www.ashmolean.org