Maharana Jagat Singh II of Mewar (r. 1734–51) Dressed as a Bhil, Hunting Deer at Night (c. 1735–40): Art, History and Details

Maharana Jagat Singh II of Mewar (r. 1734–51) Dressed as a Bhil, Hunting Deer at Night (c. 1735–40) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Chokha (Indian, active c. 1799–1824).

The work and its context

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

The ruler, who has the title Maharana, wears the leaf skirt of the Bhil people of Western India, as he hunts deer with a female tracker. They both wear a girdle of bells to scare the quarry out of the underbrush, and she illuminates them using directed light from a lamp in a pot. The king has shot a deer in the neck; rabbit, antelopes, and boar scamper away.

Object facts

• Title: Maharana Jagat Singh II of Mewar (r. 1734–51) Dressed as a Bhil, Hunting Deer at Night
• Date: c. 1735–40
• Creator attribution: Chokha (Indian, active c. 1799–1824)
• Culture: Northwestern India, Rajasthan, Rajput Kingdom of Mewar
• Type: Painting
• Technique: gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Page: 17.2 x 24.8 cm (6 3/4 x 9 3/4 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 2018.146

A detail from the museum

A woman also wearing a leaf skirt roasts kabobs on a three-pronged fork for a midnight snack on the riverbank.

Collection credit

Purchase and partial gift from the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection; Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase 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.