Kunwar Rajmalji and Kunwar Chandmalji Riding to a Mela
CultureRajasthani
Date1882
MediumOpaque pigments, gold, and silver on paper
DimensionsImage: 15 1/4 × 13 inches (38.8 × 33 cm)
Sheet: 18 1/4 × 16 1/8 inches (46.3 × 40.9 cm)
Credit LinePENDING: Purchase: the Asian Art Acquisition Fund in memory of Laurence Sickman
Object number2025.38
InscribedDevanagari inscription on the upper red border
DescriptionThis large, rectangular, vertical-format composition depicts two Indian princes riding on rearing horses, joined by five male attendants, three in front and two behind them, walking on foot. This work is painted with opaque watercolor, gold, and silver on paper. The princes are nearly identical in appearance, wearing the same costumes, turbans, and jewelry. They are tall and thin in stature and have thin moustaches. They carry swords in blue scabbards on their shoulders. The attendants in the front carry swords, and the one in the lower left corner also carries a shield. The attendants walking just behind the horses each carry a staff with a flag, symbols of regalia. The figures and horses are set against a dynamic background divides the landscape into sloping fore-to-midground, rendered in brilliant ‘Paris Green,’ which frames the body of the white horse. The background is formed by a flat rounded hill rendered in a traditional sap green, frames the second prince on his dappled brown horse. The foreground descends into a body of water, indicated with a zigzag bank, which is punctuated with the curling bodies of flopping fish. A group of antelope and a distant town and temple peer over the left and right edges of the hillside, which transitions to an arching blue sky filled with rolling clouds.Two white cranes fly towards the left at the top edge of the composition. The painting is framed inside three borders, painted in red, blue, and yellow. An inscription painted in black in Devanagari script in the top border identifies the princes as Kunwar Rajmalji, age 29, and Kunwar Chandmalji, age 28, riding to a mela, and is dated VS 1939/ 1882 C.E.
