Mewar (Udaipur), the Maharaja of.

UDAIPUR LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS THE JHELUM

I suggested that another carriage should be put on, but he had none, nor any solution to offer; so we cleared a second-class compartment and divided the party out, and then, with five people in our tiny compartment, we set out on the fifty-mile run to Udaipur.

And this was Udaipur.

One cannot help being glad that the prosaic steam-engine, crowned with foul smoke and heralded by ear-piercing whistles, has not been allowed to trespass in Udaipur, wherein no discordant note is struck by train line or factory chimney, and where everything and every one is as when the city was newly built on the final abandonment of Chitor, the ancient capital of Mewar.

The whole city of Udaipur is a paradise for the artistnot a corner, not a creature which does not seem to cry aloud to be painted.

To the south-east lay Udaipur, milk-white along the margin of its "marléd" waters.

The inexorable flight of time brought us all too soon to the limit of our stay at Udaipur.

Our dinner-table was set out on the platform of the station at Chitorgarh, and our bedrooms were close by, our host and hostess sleeping in the "special" by which they were to return to Udaipur in the morning, while we slept in a siding, ready to be coupled up to the early train from Bombay.

For these a more poetic and symbolic manner was necessary and such a style appeared in the city of Udaipur in the Rajput State of Mewar.

Painting at Udaipur is inseparably associated with the influence of two great rulersRana Jagat Singh (1628-1652) and Rana Raj Singh (1652-1681) As early as 1605 pictures had been produced at the State's former capital, Chawandthe artist being a Muhammadan named Nasiruddin.

Such an outburst of painting could hardly leave other areas unaffected and in the closing quarter of the seventeenth century, not only Bundi, the Rajput State immediately adjoining Udaipur to the east, but Malwa, the wild hilly area farther south east, witnessed a renaissance of painting.

At Bundi, the style was obviously a direct development from that of Udaipur itselfthe idioms for human figures and faces as well as the glowing colours being clearly based on Udaipur originals.

At Bundi, the style was obviously a direct development from that of Udaipur itselfthe idioms for human figures and faces as well as the glowing colours being clearly based on Udaipur originals.

The result was yet another style of paintingcomparable in certain ways to that of Bundi and Udaipur yet markedly original in its total effect.

During the eighteenth century, painting in Rajasthan became increasingly secular, even artists of Udaipur devoting themselves almost exclusively to scenes of court life.

Pictures were produced on a scale comparable to that of Udaipur thirty years earlier and at the same time a local style of great emotional intensity makes its sudden appearance.

This new Basohli style, with its flat planes of brilliant green, brown, red, blue and orange, its savage profiles and great intense eyes has obvious connections with Udaipur paintings of the 1650-60 period.

And although exact historical proof is still wanting, the most likely explanation is that under Rana Raj Singh some Udaipur artists were persuaded to migrate to Basohli.

We know that Rajput rulers in the Punjab Hills were often connected by marriage with Rajput families in Rajasthan and it is therefore possible that during a visit to Udaipur, Raja Kirpal Pal recruited his atelier.

Udaipur painting, however, can hardly have been the only source for even in its earliest examples Basohli painting has a smooth polish, a savage sophistication and a command of shading which suggests the influence of the Mughal style of Delhi.

The Rasika Priya and the Bhagavata Purana, the texts so greatly favoured at Udaipur, were discarded and in their place Basohli artists produced a series of isolated scenes from Krishna's lifethe child Krishna stealing butter, Krishna the gallant robbing the cowgirls or exacting toll, Krishna extinguishing the forest-fire, Krishna the violent lover devouring Radha with hungry eyes.

The figures with their neat line and eager faces are typical of Bundi painting after it had broken free from the parent style of Udaipur.

[Illustration] PLATE 29 Radha and Krishna making Love Illustration to the Sursagar of Sur Das Udaipur, Rajasthan, c. 1650 G.K. Kanoria collection, Calcutta Like Plate 28, an illustration to a Hindi poem analysing Krishna's conduct as ideal lover.

The Udaipur style of painting with its vehement figures, geometrical compositions and brilliant colouring was admirably suited to interpreting scenes of romantic violence.