Maharaja Shri Govind Ram Singh ji with attendants sailing on Lake Pichola, India, Rajasthan, Mewar, Udaipur, 18th century

Ex-collection Comte Vitold de Marie-Golish (1921-2003)

Arts D'Orient, Drouot Paris, 13 November 2001, lot 73

Private collection, London

Vitold de Golish, Splendeur et Crepuscule des Maharajas, Paris, 1963, p.69.

The inscription on the reverse identifies the main subject as Maharaja Shri Govind Ram ji who is depicted seated under a canopy on a red flat-bottomed boat enjoying a leisurely ride on a lake. His title suggests that he may have been a visiting ruler from another princely state in Rajasthan. The waters are teeming with wildlife including cranes, ducks, fish and crocodiles seen in twos or threes. The sides of the lake have steps leading down to the water, with dome-shaped pavilions marking corners and entrances. Lake Pichola in Udaipur, named after a neighbouring village called Picholi, is an artificial freshwater lake created in 1362. The embankment was built by Rana Udai Singh, the twelfth Maharana of Mewar, in 1560.

A large painting, dated to circa 1720, depicts Maharana Sangram Singh watching an extraordinary spectacle of eight enormous, thrashing crocodiles being fed at the island of Jagmandir on Lake Pichola, now in in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (illus. A.Topsfied, Paintings from Rajasthan, Melbourne, 1980, no.72, p.70). In his extensive Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, James Tod recorded in c.1820, "…there are two of these alligators quite familiar to the inhabitants of Udaipur who come when called ‘from the vasty deep’ for food…" (Vol.II, p.753-4) (ibid.) The three red boats moored on the left hand side of the arcade at Jagmandir are similar to the one in the present painting.