Princes hunting in a rocky landscape (c. 1580–85; borders added c. 1700s): Art, History and Details

Princes hunting in a rocky landscape (c. 1580–85; borders added c. 1700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The subdued palette of this tinted drawing belies the dire events of the scene. A group of Mughal nobles out hunting with falcons has chanced upon two lions in the wilderness, and one of the men has been attacked. The bearded figure with the falcon at the upper left and the huntsman about to retrieve a duck caught by one of the trained falcons at the lower left are reminiscent of an earlier work, Hunting with Falcons in a Landscape (CMA 2013.292), painted by a Persian artist. By the time this painting was made Akbar exerted more direct influence on his artists’ work, and it reveals his taste for dramatic action and climactic moments where life and death hang in the balance.

Object facts

• Title: Princes hunting in a rocky landscape
• Date: c. 1580–85; borders added c. 1700s
• Culture: India, Mughal, 16th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Ink, slight color, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 26.4 x 15.8 cm (10 3/8 x 6 1/4 in.); Overall: 40.5 x 26 cm (15 15/16 x 10 1/4 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1940.1197

A detail from the museum

A hunter with gunpowder pouch hurriedly loads a musket with a scouring stick.

Collection credit

Edward L. Whittemore Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hollis, Howard. "Lion Hunt." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 28, no. 10 (December 1941): 149–151.
• Leach, Linda York. Indian Miniature Paintings and Drawings. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1986.
• Barañano, Kosme de, Valerio Adami, and Amelia Valtolina. De forma cerrada: Una biographia del dibujo. Valencia [Meina, Italy]: Institute Valencia d'Art Modern; Fondazione europea del disegno, 2002.

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.