Maharaja Man Singh Rathore's Clan in Hong Kong

Maharaja Man Singh Rathore's Clan in Hong Kong
(NSI News Source Info) October 17, 2008: Met in Hong Kong on Oct 14., Nimi Rathore.... who is our dear friend and relative. Coincidently, after checking her roots lineage, she belongs to Maharaja Man Singh Rathore's Clan, the great Suryavanshi Rajputs....Rathore rulers of Marwar (Jodhpur).

K. V. Seth with Nimi Rathore in Kowloon., Hong Kong

Marwar-Jodhpur, the largest of the former Rajput kingdoms (in the modern state of Rajasthan), was ruled by the Rathore Rajputs, a princely caste of warriors who became great patrons of art in the 17th to19th centuries. Produced for the private enjoyment of the Marwar-Jodhpur maharajas, virtually none of the 60 works on view in “Garden and Cosmos” have ever been published or seen by scholars since their creation centuries ago. Strikingly innovative in their large scale, subject matter and styles, they reveal both the conceptual sophistication of the royal atelier and the kingdom’s engagement with the changing political landscapes of early modern India. Marwar-Jodhpur court painters’ atelier developed two major aesthetic sensibilities that have been previously unrecognized. The dominant theme of 18th-century painting was the garden, an idyllic landscape enjoyed by rulers and gods alike. In the 19th century, artists focused on evoking otherworldly spaces of a sublime and awe-inspiring cosmos. The bold inventiveness of Marwar-Jodhpur artists is revealed through their creation of “monumental manuscripts.” Thirty-three monumental folios, each a full-page painting approximately four feet in width, are featured in the exhibition. Like most north Indian court paintings, they are glowing and finely detailed opaque watercolors on paper, but their scale dramatically overturns typical expectations of Indian painting as a “miniature” art. “Garden and Cosmos” is divided into thematic sections devoted to the garden and cosmos themes, with an introductory gallery about the kingdom of Marwar-Jodhpur and the origins of its court painting traditions in the 17th century. The Garden in the Desert The exhibition opens with a splendid embroidered tent canopy from the Marwar ancestral collection. Exuberantly adorned on its interior with silk-embroidered blossoms on scrolling vines, the tent canopy recreates the virtual gardens that the maharajas enjoyed when they made camp in remote areas of the desert kingdoms while on military campaigns or religious pilgrimages. The floral pattern, which recurs on paintings throughout the “Garden” galleries, epitomizes the Marwar aesthetic of the garden. The Origins of Jodhpur Court Painting Between the 13th and the 17th centuries, the Rathore clan leaders transformed from regional rulers into cosmopolitan maharajas, or great kings. Five 17th-century paintings track this transformation by revealing how the atelier brought together a local, spontaneous style and the sophisticated court style of the Mughal Empire (1526-1857) to create a uniquely Marwar-Jodhpur idiom. Small in size, these royal portraits and musical theme (ragamala) paintings allow the viewer to fully appreciate the innovative directions taken by the atelier in the following centuries.