Maharaja Scindia, Nobles, and High Officials, Gwalior (1887): Art, History and Details

Maharaja Scindia, Nobles, and High Officials, Gwalior (1887) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Raja Deen Dayal (Indian, 1844–1905).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Capturing such a massive group in a single shot was challenging. Deen Dayal’s use of a wide-angle lens, betrayed by the curved distortion of the building’s facade, was rare for him at the time. The young Maharaja Scindia of Gwalior is just right of the composition’s center. The distinctive angled turbans identify Gwalior’s historical allegiance to the Marathas, a Hindu empire that controlled areas of western, central, and southern India from 1674 to 1818. Gwalior had a British liaison starting in 1782 and came under British control in the 1840s. The British officers at the left may have been visiting dignitaries, a common occasion for commissioning a formal group portrait.

Object facts

• Title: Maharaja Scindia, Nobles, and High Officials, Gwalior
• Date: 1887
• Creator attribution: Raja Deen Dayal (Indian, 1844–1905)
• Culture: India
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print
• Dimensions: Image: 19 x 27.4 cm (7 1/2 x 10 13/16 in.); Paper: 19 x 27.4 cm (7 1/2 x 10 13/16 in.)
• Collection: PH - Misc. 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 2016.266.16

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.