PAINTINGS FROM KOTAH AT HARVARD ON DISPLAY IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE ART MUSEUMS' CELEBRATION OF THE ANNIVERSARY OF INDIAN INDEPENDENCE
For Immediate Release - October 2, 1997
The special exhibition The Art of Kotah at Harvard is now on display on the second floor of the Arthur M. Sackler Museum through November 30, 1997. The exhibition which opened on September 20, is presented in conjunction with the traveling exhibition Gods, Kings, and Tigers: The Art of Kotah, and is one of a number of special offerings this fall by the Art Museums given in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of India's independence. Twenty-eight paintings from the Art Museums' collection and from a private collection are on display. The Art of Kotah at Harvard is organized by Stuart Cary Welch, curator of Islamic and later Indian art emeritus, Harvard University Art Museums, and Rochelle Kessler, acting assistant curator of Islamic and later Indian art. The Sackler Museum is located at 485 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The former state of Kotah (modern Rajasthan) was one of the most prolific artistic centers in north India from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. A small number of talented artists elevated Kotah to this high position. The earliest Kotah pictures are assigned to the Master of the Elephants, so named for his vivid characterizations of these powerful, useful animals. He was identified during the research undertaken for the exhibition Gods, Kings, and Tigers. Guided by Rao Madho Singh (r. 1631-48), founder of the kingdom, the Master of the Elephants developed his particular style. Two paintings in the The Art of Kotah at Harvard are attributable to the Master of the Elephants. One of these paintings, the spirited A Family of Elephants Surveyed by the Rao (c. 1640-50) clearly demonstrates his understanding of pachydermal form and psychology.
The masterfulness and intensitity of the Master of the Elephants set the stage for an artist who might have been his student, Kotah's second -and supreme-artist, the Kotah Master, also identified during during research for Gods, Kings, and Tigers. Ten paintings attributable to the Kotah Master are on display in The Art of Kotah at Harvard-making this small exhibition a very significant complement to the larger, traveling exhibition. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, this remarkable artist from Golconda was hired by Rao Jagat Singh of Kotah (r. 1658-83) who served as a general in the imperial Mughal armies at Aurangabad in the Deccan. His inborn artistic talent was enriched and polished in the ateliers of the Golconda sultans, whose glorious artistic synthesis united several artistic strains: the calligraphic line of the Persian Safavids, the sensitive naturalism and finesse of the Mughals, the power of the indigenous south Indian traditions and Golconda's own lyrical elegance. At the behest of Rao Jagat Singh, the Kotah Master brought this artistic watershed to Rajasthan, where he worked for the rest of his long prolific life. His portrait of Rao Jagat Singh in the exhibition ranks high in Rajput portraiture. Its finesse, lyricism, and elegance reveal Persianate influences learned at Galconda.
The painting Bhoj Singh of Bundi Slays a Lion (c. 1700-25) displays the artistic view of the Kotah Master and his new Rajput patrons who conceived artistic forms from within rather than from without, envisioning and feeling their subjects rather than merely studying them from life. The lion's mighty litheness, dagger-teeth, and strokable mane emerged from the artist's inner eye. The terrifying powerful animal is not a portrait of an individual lion, but rather the embodiment of a dreamlike lion-ness. Emblematic of chaotic evil, he is ripe for slaughter at the hands of Rao Bhoj, the quintessence of everything brave, orderly, and good.
Kotah's adaptation of the international, visionary style was transmitted to Sheikh Taju, a junior master recruited in about 1720 from the imperial workshops of Delhi. He is represented in the exhibition with a handful of important paintings. Like his mentor, the Kotah Master, Sheikh Taju constantly sketched from life, an enlivening habit that flavored Kotah art into the later nineteenth century. Although Sheikh Taju never succeeded in recording the linear subtleties of the Master of the Elephants, he became one of India's supreme elephant painters. His most appealing works are dashingly sketched from life, such as Sketches of an Elephant Combat (c. 1730), a broadly brushed study for a painting, in which he captures the powerful motions of two elephants in fierce combat. The artist's talents are also demonstrated the painting Elephant Chase through a Postern Gate (c. 1730) and the spontaneous sketch Four Studies of a Baby Elephant Tempted by a Boy with Sweets (c. 1730).
After the death of the Kotah Master in the 1730's Sheikh Taju trained several young artists from the Mewar capital at Udaipur to fulfill the increasing demand for pictures, especially for large hunting scenes. Guided by Sheikh Taju, these accomplished landscape painters mastered the Kotah specialties: lions, tigers, and elephants, with which they inhabited tapestry-like junglescapes.
During the early nineteenth century, Maharao Kishor Singh (r. 1819-27) found another greatly talented artist, known as the Nathadvara Master. Although trained in the workshops of Mewar's Nathadvara shrine to paint images for visiting devotees, he soon adjusted to the vigorous yet refined Kotah style. His foremost contribution to the Kotah tradition was his stunning exploration of color. Like his predecessors, he documented the world around him; and with profound humor, he sketched virtually everything in sight. The painting Maharao Ram Singh Celebrates Divali (c. 1840), one of five in the exhibition which are probably painted by the Nathadvara Master, reveals the quirky and comical character of Maharao Ram Singh, who encouraged his artists to record his and his circle's merriest antics. Although the crowd of happy celebrants of the Festival of Lights is relatively staid, the swirling ladies, monkeys, and the characteristic likeness of the flirtatious Maharao Ram Singh offers ingredients from other examples of the artist's more hunorous works. The Nathadvara Master's many surviving drawings, along with those of the earlier Kotah draftsmen, provide insights into fort, town, and rural Rajasthan.
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Organized by the Harvard University Art Museums and the Asia Society, New York, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of India's independence, Gods, Kings, and Tigers: The Art of Kotah is on view at the Sackler Museum through November 2, 1997. This unprecedented exhibition-the first in the United States devoted to the artistic production of a single Rajput court-offers a unique view of pre-modern India through seventy paintings, drawings, and utilitarian works of art from the royal collections of the former state of Kotah. Following its showing at the Sackler, Gods, Kings, and Tigers will travel to the Rietberg Museum in Zurich.
GALLERY TALK
Gallery talks are free with the price of admission to the Harvard University Art Museums.
Sunday, October 26, Sackler Museum, 2:00 p.m.
Gods, Kings, and Tiger: The Art of Kotah
With Rochelle Kessler, acting assistant curator of Islamic and later Indian art.
CONCERT
Tickets for the following concert are $20 and $25; for further information and to purchase tickets, please call (508) 468-2289. Tickets may be purchased at the door only upon availability.
Sunday, October 19, Sackler lecture hall, 7:00 p.m.
Pandit Ajay Chakravarti, vocal, Kaushiki Chakravarti, vocal, Anindo Chatarjee,
tabla, and Guha, harmonium
M. VICTOR LEVENTRITT LECTURES
Wednesday, October 22 and Thursday, October 23, Sackler lecture hall, 6:00 p.m.
"Image and Essence: Indian Paintings from the 16th to the 19th Century"
Free and open to the public; registration is not required; complimentary parking available at the Broadway Garage, on the corner of Felton Street and Broadway.
A series of four lectures paired on two consecutive evenings. Speakers and topics include:
Kapila Vatsyayan, founding director, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts
"Paintings and Poetry in Jayadeva's Gitagovinda"
Robert Skelton, former keeper of the Indian Department, Victoria and Albert Museum
"Painting in Rajasthan"
Milo C. Beach, director, Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
"Maharajas and the Grand Mughal: The Relationship of Rajput and Mughal Painting"
Joanna Williams, professor, History of Art, University of California, Berkeley
"Two or Three Ways of Looking at Delhi in 1842"
The M. Victor Leventritt Lecture Fund was established through the generosity of the wife, children, and friends of the late M. Victor Leventritt, Harvard class of 1935. The purpose of the fund is to present outstanding scholars of the history and theory of art to the Harvard and greater Boston communities.
WORKSHOP FOR CHILDREN
Sunday, November 2 for ages 8-10
"The Colorful World of Kotah"
Sackler, 2:00-3:30 p.m.
$7; advance registration is required; call (617) 495-2397.
Jungles with tigers, elephants, and snakes, warriors on horses, dancers and kings: We invite your children to discover the colorful and lively world of Kotah! Through various activities within the exhibition galleries and the children's opportunity to create their own works of art, the vivacious spirit of the Kotah world, captured in these images, will be brought to life.
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For general information on the Harvard University Art Museums, please call (617) 495-9400. For press information or photographs, please contact Kate McShea at (617) 495-2397. For more information on events, please contact the Friends, Fellows, and Special Programs Office at (617) 495-4544. World Wide Web: www.artmuseums.harvard.edu
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The Harvard University Art Museums comprise three museums (Busch-Reisinger Museum, Fogg Art Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum), all located on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, MA, at the intersection of Quincy Street and Broadway, adjacent to Harvard Yard. The Art Museums are open Monday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., and Sunday 1:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. Closed holidays. Admission is $5.00; $4.00 for senior citizens; $3.00 for students; free under 18 and on Saturday mornings. The Art Museums' facilities are wheelchair accessible. For special tour reservations, please call (617) 496-8576. General tours are offered Monday through Friday from September through June. The Fogg tour is at 11:00 a.m.; the Busch-Reisinger tour is at 1:00 p.m.; and the Sackler is at 2:00 p.m. -end