A Great Man of Lower Caste

Portraiture was an important genre of Rajput painting, recording the idealized appearances of the rulers and aristocrats of the Rajput court. Sometimes, people who were not nobility but served the rulers in some way were also captured in portraits. Here, we see a large man seated and resting against a cushion. He holds a katar, or punch-dagger, at the ready; was he a respected soldier or bodyguard for a Rajput ruler?

This preliminary drawing for a painting shows how Rajput court painters would work out compositions on paper of a lesser quality before working on the final painting. Here you can see the lines of the initial sketch, and then the darker lines of the more finished composition. If you look very closely, you can see tiny pin-prick holes all along those final lines. This is a technique called “pouncing,” used to transfer a drawing. A painter lays the drawing on the final surface and then pats a small bag filled with coal dust on the drawing, forcing the dust through the small holes and leaving an outline of the composition on the new surface, to be finished with lines and colors.