Sunday, January 18, 2009

If I Invited You to Wear Pink and Watch Me Ride a Horse on my Roof You'd Come, Right?



Well, you would if I was Maharao Ram Singh II of Kota, who in 1851 invited all his courtiers to do exactly that. This painting shows the event, complete with telling details, like the empty windows of his magnificent palace. Everybody came. All the rooms in the palace are vacant except one in the very bottom left, which holds a caged tiger.

You can see the original and lots more amazing art in the new portrait exhibit The Privilege of Paint in the Indian Art room at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.


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