Open full image Pin

Maharaja of Kotah Listening to Music and Watching Dancers

Unknown

1820

unspecified

From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art

Patna School of Painting Romanticism Early 19th Century Genre Scene

Dominant colour

Maharaja of Kotah Listening to Music and Watching Dancers is a 1820 unspecified by Unknown, a Patna School of Painting work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.

Who painted this?: Unknown
When & what style?: 1820 · Patna School of Painting
Where can I see it?: Cleveland Museum of Art

About this work

You see a ruler sitting on a palace terrace, watching dancers while servants bring food and wine. Across the river, his hunting lodge stands in a wild forest full of deer and tigers. This painting comes from Kota, a small kingdom in India. The artists there borrowed styles from the Mughal emperors—like the mix of white marble and pink sandstone. The details show how royal life looked in the early 1800s. To see more like this, look up the Kotah school.

The story of this work

Overview

In the foreground the king enjoys food, wine, and a dance performance with his companions on the terrace of a palace residence. His hunting lodge is on the opposite bank of the river. Deer, wild boar, and the coveted tiger roam the forested wilderness. Rulers of the princely state of Kota adopted many architectural and costume elements from their overlords, the Mughal emperors. The mix of white marble and pink sandstone with rooftop pavilions and niches in the walls are typical of domestic architecture under the Mughals of India. By the early 1800s, Indian artists adopted an interest in…

Read the full account in the museum source.