A STANDING PORTRAIT OF MAHARAJA JAGAT SINGH (1786 - 1818)
Jaipur, Rajasthan, North-Western India, late 19th - 20th century

Opaque pigments heightened with silver and gold on paper, the vertical composition portraying the Rajput Maharaja Jagat Singh of Amber and Jaipur with a raying halo, standing against a green hilly landscape, resting on a long wooden staff, depicted with an elaborate headdress with raised pearls and gems and a long shawl around his chin and head, the portrait set within black rules, and concentric polychrome borders, at the bottom a faded inscription in Devanagari script reading Shri Maharaja Jagat Singh, Jaipur and then possibly a date, now worn out, mounted, glazed and framed, 35.5cm x 26cm excluding the frame.

Another portrait of the young ruler with a raying halo, elaborate headdress and ornate shawl worn around the chin can be seen in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (MFA), Maharaja Jagat Singh of Jaipur with an Officer, attributed to 1810 Jaipur (acc. no. 25.210).

Although Jagat Singh’s kingdom was fairly short (1803 - 1818), his patronage of the arts, especially painting, left a significant mark in the workshops (suratkhana and karkhana) of Jaipur. In the late 19th century, a group of Jaipuri painters, who were the direct descendants of the early 19th-century Ustads (master artists), tried to introduce modern improvements in the field of drawing and painting aiming to keep alive the old traditions encouraged and promoted under Jagat Singh’s reign, despite the constant modernisation and new equipment entering Jaipur from the West.