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Umed Singh of Kota Hunting Lions
c. 1785–1790
- Medium
- brush drawing with slight color on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Overall: 39 x 52 cm (15 3/8 x 20 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- India, Rajasthan, Kota, 18th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Mrs. J. Livingstone Taylor Collection by Exchange
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
A family of lions with two cubs is caught unawares by royal huntsmen amid a tangle of jungle by the side of a stream. The adult lions twist around, startled by the sound of the horn intended to drive them out of the safety of their glade. The men, other than the ruler at the left, have turbans camouflaged with leaves, and they surround the lions, ready to let spears and arrows fly.
Before embarking on a costly finished painting, Indian artists often made preparatory sketches, in which they worked out the particulars of the composition. Whiter sections indicate areas where erasures and adjustments were made. Freer in execution, the drawings are often more evocative and exuberant than the more formal full-color finished paintings.
