Men hunting wild boar, painting in gouache on paper

From Kotah/Bundi, Rajasthan, India
Around AD 1775

Kings hunting boar in the forests of southern Rajasthan

In this large painting five men are shown in a dense forest hunting wild boar. Three men on the left stand behind a cow, while one fires a musket at a dying boar on the right among the trees. Above two other men attack a fleeing boar with a sword and a spear. The men all wear clothes typical of the Mughal court, indicative of the interaction between the Muslim overlord and his Hindu Rajput allies.

This painting is typical of the many produced in the two adjacent southern Rajasthani states of Kotah and Bundi in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The size of paintings produced at the courts of north India increased from the seventeenth century. Many Rajput paintings used a horizontal landscape format for loose sheets in contrast to the vertical portrait format of many Mughal and Islamic paintings bound into books or albums. Paintings from Kotah and Bundi are particularly renowned for the great stress on vegetation and landscape, with fine details of trees and grass. Many Kotah-Bundi paintings are of Rajput rulers on hunting trips, or of elephant fights, a popular spectator sport at the many courts. Rajput rulers often wished to portray themselves hunting or relaxing in the palace, as well as in devotion to deities all activities considered worthy of the king.

M.C. Beach, Mughal and Rajput painting (Cambridge University Press, 1992)