Raja Sansar Chand of Kangra and courtiers (c. 1783): Art, History and Details

Raja Sansar Chand of Kangra and courtiers (c. 1783) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Ruler of the western Himalayan kingdom of Kangra from 1775 to 1823, Sansar Chand (1765–1823) is seated on a red dais. As a youth at around 18 years of age, he still has not grown a beard, and his distinctive curly bushy hair is visible beneath his pink turban. This portrait may commemorate the Mughals relinquishing control of Kangra in 1783.

Object facts

• Title: Raja Sansar Chand of Kangra and courtiers
• Date: c. 1783
• Culture: Northern India, Pahari kingdoms
• Type: Painting
• Technique: gum tempera and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 24.2 x 21.6 cm (9 1/2 x 8 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1986.63

A detail from the museum

This painting once belonged to Cleveland attorney George P. Bickford, who endowed positions at the CMA and Harvard.

Collection credit

Gift of Clara Taplin Rankin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. and George Montgomery. Rajput Painting; with an introductory essay and catalogue notes. New York: Asia House, 1960.
• Czuma, Stanislaw J. Indian Art from the George P. Bickford Collection: Catalog. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975.

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.