Maharana Amar Singh II Riding a Jodhpur Horse
Artist: Attributed to Stipple Master (Indian, active ca. 1690–1715)
Date: ca. 1700–1710
Culture: Western India, Rajasthan, Udaipur
Medium: Opaque watercolor and ink on paper
Dimensions: Page: 14 11/16 x 12 1/8 in. (37.3 x 30.8 cm) Image: 13 3/16 x 10 3/4 in. (33.5 x 27.3 cm)
Accession Number: 2002.177

Amar Singh II, accompanied by four retainers, rides to the hunt on a prized blue-gray stallion, the chromatic and compositional focus of the painting. An inscription on the reverse tells us that the horse is from Jodhpur, a city famed for its steeds. Dramatically rendered portraits of prized horses and elephants were a well-developed genre of Mughal painting, and here the artist has combined this celebration of a horse and rider into another favored Mughal idiom, the royal hunt. The so-called Stipple Master’s elegant equestrian group contrasts with the understated landscape, in which lightly modulated forms echo the Persian-Mughal technique of nam qalam (half-tone painting), believed to have been inspired in part by European grisaille. Several of the finest artists in Amar Singh II’s atelier created colored drawings in this style, perhaps in reaction to the more traditional, brightly colored Rajput paintings.
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York