An equestrian portrait of a (?)Maratha prince
Northern Deccan, circa 1800
Opaque pigments with gold on paper
12 ¼ by 8 5/6 in.; 31 by 22.5 cm. painting
PROVENANCE
Acquired in Paris, 1950s
Private collection, by descent, Utah, 1950s-2019
A prince is depicted riding through the countryside with only a small number of men, while his accompanying troops march in the distance. He wears a long white jama trimmed in gold, the top being of diaphanous figured jamdani work, along with a brocade patka and a gilt leather harness for his sword. His turban is of beautiful figured red silk wound round and over a cone. His grey stallion has his lower half painted with henna edged with a row of poppies, and is as gorgeously caparisoned as his rider. He is followed by four attendants on foot with insignia of arms and by four soldiers carrying sheathed muskets on their shoulders, all clad in red coats over white shirt and flat blue turbans with gold badges. A guide with tucked-up jama precedes them. In the distance in front of a small fort marches a small body of troops with uniforms like those of the men following the prince. They are marching through a green landscape dotted with small clumps of flowering plants and with lotus ponds and some groves of flowering trees. Regular rounded hills edged with trees line the horizon dotted with temples.
This style has retained many of the features associated with Deccani painting in the eighteenth century - the elaborate accoutrements of prince and horse, the delicate depiction of flowers in the landscape – but we have clearly moved on into a different milieu with the somewhat regimented followers and stiff landscape, and above all the uniformed troops. Uniforms had been introduced into the Maratha armies by the French generals who served Sindhia and other Maratha chiefs, and here we seem to have a Maratha prince, judging by his flattish turban and projecting cone, who has adopted the idea for his troops.