'Princes, Palaces, and Passion' at the Asian Art Museum

Wednesday, 20 December 2006 18:48

San Francisco, CA - When the nineteenth-century American painter Edwin Lord Weeks arrived at Udaipur, the capital of Mewar in India’s Rajasthan—the “Land of Kings”—region, he found a city “airy, unreal, and fantastic as a dream, ­­stretching away in a seemingly endless perspective of latticed cupolas, domes, turrets, and jutting oriel-windows, rising tier above tier, at a dizzy height from the ground …”

Few regions of India have excited the imagination as much as the kingdom of Mewar.  It was celebrated as the most heroic and illustrious of the kingdoms that made up the northwestern area of present day India.  Despite this, very few museum exhibitions have been devoted to the innovative artists whose work helped establish the state’s reputation.  Princes, Palaces, and Passion: The Art of India’s Mewar Kingdom, an exhibition presented at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco from February 2 through April 29, 2007, addresses that deficiency by gathering some seventy-four objects encompassing the depth and range of Mewar’s artistic achievement.  Princes, Palaces, and Passion was organized by the Asian Art Museum, and curated by Dr. Joanna Williams, professor of art history at University of California, Berkeley.  The exhibition will be on view in the museum’s Osher Gallery, and the Asian Art Museum will serve as the only venue.

In the making for more than eight years, this exhibition—the first outside India to focus on the art of this fabled Rajasthani kingdom—features artworks ranging from the early sixteenth century to the early twentieth century, borrowed from important museum and private collections in Great Britain, Australia, and the United States.  At the core is a selection of paintings that dramatically conveys the brilliance of Mewar’s artistic traditions.  The exhibition brings to life some of the great individual Mewari painters—especially Bakhta (active 1760–1810) and his son, Chokha (active 1799–1824), who previously have been largely relegated to anonymity.

The exhibition also breaks new ground in viewing the complex links between the arts of the court and the arts of the village.  Through the inclusion of such works as terracotta devotional panels, large temple paintings on cloth, and a miniature shrine and huge painting for village retellings of heroic legends, the exhibition highlights some of the many ways in which court, temple, and village were inextricably linked.

All of the material in Princes, Palaces, and Passion originates from Rajasthan, the region of India—in terms of visual associations, folk art, tourism, and merchandise—most familiar to museum-goers.  The most powerful Hindu kingdom in Rajasthan was Mewar with its capital located at Udaipur, a city known for its beautiful palaces and vibrant cultural traditions.  Mewar’s defense of its first capital at Chittaur against waves of Muslim invaders between the early fourteenth and the late sixteenth centuries caused it to be celebrated as the most heroic and illustrious of the Rajput states.  In response to the siege of Chittaur the Mewar capital was moved south to Udaipur in the 1560s. From that base, until 1615, Mewar stood as the last holdout until it, too, was forced to submit to the Muslim Mughal empire.

An important aspect of the exhibition focuses on the royal courts of Mewar which supported the production of great paintings from the seventeenth through early twentieth centuries.  Rulers were expected to be generous patrons supporting their communities.  Over the centuries these rulers made gifts to schools and religious institutions as well as to artists, artisans, and performers. Most courts maintained painting workshops, but in Mewar, court artists made a speciality of documenting the activities of reigning kings.

Indian art has often been considered the production of anonymous artists uninterested in leaving personal legacies.  This view is beginning to be challenged.  Princes, Palaces, and Passion brings together for the first time more than a dozen paintings by two Mewar painters, Bakhta and his son, Chokha, as well as pictures created by a number of known artists.  The miniature paintings are truly remarkable pictures, illustrating Hindu stories, epic myths, charismatic gods, and royal heroes, as well as private and intimate moments.  The presentation of these subjects may be strikingly dramatic in the case of religious and heroic pictures, and visually intriguing and sensual in images of a more personal or erotic nature.

A highlight of the exhibition is the 1761 painting by Bakhta entitled Maharana Jagat Singh and companions hunting boar at Khas Odi, which features an annual spring hunt and festival.  At the left in this painting a wild boar (portrayed twice) is being executed at close range by the solemn maharana (king).  The viewer is brought close to the ruler, who stands out by virtue of scale and strong line rather than through the glitter of gold.  He and his nobles are set in a solid pink enclosure, which picks up tones of the clouds and the cushion in the royal barge.  This is the first dated work by Bakhta, providing an excellent example in which his distinctive sensibility toward landscapes and the use of colorful washes in the sky characterize this artist’s distinctive style.

Another painting of note is the early nineteenth century watercolor Lovers on a terrace, believed to have been created within the circle of Bakhta’s son, Chokha, which features a couple in an ardent embrace.  The man in this couple is an unidentified prince.  The lovers’ amorous position suggests passive delight on the woman’s part.  The man’s eyes focus on the woman’s breasts, and her eyes on the colors of the clouds.  This image seems to belong to a group of versions of a similar subject produced by Chokha and his contemporaries in training or in competition.  This picture is perhaps the most attractive in the series, with the luminous colors of the bolsters framing the delicately painted torsos.

Most exhibitions of art from the Rajasthani kingdoms have focused on courtly artistic production, rarely exploring the ways in which the histories, beliefs, narratives, and customs of court, temple, and village intersect.  But such links go beyond the mere commissioning of village artists to produce objects for the court—village arts played a role in the broader religious and cultural arena.  Scroll paintings narrating the legends of village gods and heroes functioned as portable shrines.  The epic stories of these gods incorporate ideals of heroism and honor, showing village participation in the same myth-making traditions as those practiced at court.

Among the folk arts featured in the exhibition is a watercolor on cotton wall hanging for the festival of Sharad Purnima, dated to approx. 1880.  A large cloth hanging like this, known as a picchavai (literally, “that which hangs behind”) was made for a temple or shrine in a private home.  The central image of Krishna as Shri Nathji, his arm forever raised to hold aloft Mt. Govardhana and protect his villagers, is flanked by beautiful village girls and two priests. 

The work of village artisans is a vibrant feature of Mewar’s artistic landscape.  The potters’ village of Molela still makes images for tribal people, who walk hundreds of miles across hills and desert to take these terracottas (examples featured in the exhibition) back to their modest yet colorful mud shrines.  Furthermore, three towns in this region have long produced large paintings of folk epics known as phads.  A bhopa, a storyteller/priest, would purchase a painting from a Brahman painter and travel on camel-back all over Rajasthan to perform at important events for the herder communities.  The exhibition includes a phads, which is at once a complex picture, a backdrop, and a shrine to the deified hero.

Princes, Palaces, and Passion goes beyond an exploration of the courtly arts of Rajasthan to highlight some of the many ways in which court, temple, and village were inextricably linked.  The artworks on view explores the rich interactions that occurred between specific courts and many different aesthetic arenas.  There are interesting caste and family connections among different painting traditions in the Mewar region.  In Nathadwara, traditional painters producing the picchwais have the same caste background as the aforementioned imperial painters, and their present-day milieu may shed light on the origins of other great painters.  Likewise the long narrative cloth phads were created by painters with caste connections to the other groups. The itinerant nature of these images is a fascinating example of the dispersal of style.  Illuminating the brilliant arts of Mewar, Princes, Palaces and Passion brings to life the vibrant kingdom that enchanted Edwin Lord Weeks with its “delightful confusion of light and color.”

Exhibition publication:
Kingdom of the Sun: Indian Court and Village Art from the Princely State of Mewar.  This major catalogue, edited by exhibition curator Joanna Williams of the University of California, Berkeley, and produced by the Asian Art Museum to accompany the exhibition Princes, Palaces, and Passion, includes five original essays by leading scholars as well as detailed entries on each of the objects in the exhibition.  Containing 170 full-color illustrations as well as a glossary, a bibliography, and an index, this book provides an authoritative overview of the varied arts of Mewar. 8½ x 12 in., 240 pp., paperback, 170 illus., glossary, bibliography, index, est. price $40 (inquire at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ).

About the Asian Art Museum
The Asian Art Museum is a public institution whose mission is to lead a diverse global audience in discovering the unique material, aesthetic, and intellectual achievements of Asian art and culture.  Holding nearly 16,000 Asian art treasures spanning 6,000 years of history, the museum is one of the largest museums in the Western world devoted exclusively to Asian art.  Once located in Golden Gate Park, the museum now resides at its new, expanded facility at Civic Center Plaza.  An architectural gem featuring a dynamic blend of beaux arts and modern design elements, the museum’s new home is the result of a dramatic transformation of San Francisco’s former main library building by renowned architect Gae Aulenti (designer of Paris’s Musée d’Orsay) into a showcase for the museum’s acclaimed collection and exhibitions.  Visit : www.asianart.org.