Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur
British Museum, London
The first thing that struck me in Garden and Cosmos was the richness and variety of colour, seemingly as bright today as when the paintings were made some 300 years ago. These dazzling Indian paintings were commissioned by the maharajas, who ruled over the Jodhpur region, for their own pleasure and enjoyment. As such, they represent the different aesthetic tastes and differing political and spiritual views of three generations at the Jodhpur Court.
Paintings at the opening of the exhibition contrast the exquisite miniature portraits, small in size and carried out with great delicacy and refinement that were greatly influenced by Persian work, with more freely-painted images in which the brush seems to jump and fly across the surface. These two traditions were beautifully brought together by painters in Jodhpur by artists who had lowly status and for the most part are anonymous.
Garden and Cosmos are two metaphors representing the life and concerns of the maharajas. Broadly, “Garden” can be seen as representing the life and families of the Jodhpur rulers in and around the palace, the ornate style depicting the temporal pleasures of courtly life with sensuous parties in royal court pavilions, fine structures that suggest both light and elegance. Hindu deities set in idyllic landscapes and verdant forests evoke the enduring appeal of lush gardens for a kingdom set in the desert reaches of north-west India. These were ideal settings where the great epics took place.
By contrast, the “Cosmos” paintings are concerned with unravelling the mysteries of the universe, the “absolute and all encompassing formless essence from which we all emerge”. The story is graphically shown in one series of triptychs in which, in one image, the first panel is pure gold, a softly shimmering surface of suggestion and promise, the second with the god emerging and the third that separates the material from the spiritual.
Surprisingly, given the small size of the early portraits, many of the later images are large in scale and ambitions in composition. Tiny figures, some mythological half human half animal, swim or ride on equally exotic creatures, surround the maharaja who is inevitably short, plum and elaborately dressed. Several strings of pearls indicate power and wealth.
The compositions, often including up to four different perspectival views combine a naive understanding of space with great skill and ability to depict it in a way that is neither ambiguous nor confused. We know where we are and what we are looking at. Artists, such as Picasso, later used such devices in his own work.
Each of the 50 odd images, on loan from the royal collection in Jodhpur, is accompanied by an intelligently written label, which sets the scene. One, for instance, reminds us of the symbolic importance of elephants, creatures indicating power, wealth and sovereignty. The exhibition ends with a series of paintings illustrating an as yet unknown text, the large fields of distinctive, brilliantly coloured patterns suggest both sophistication and vitality. With so much detail and story telling on show, each image is a delight that cannot be rushed – the more you look, the more you find. This is an exhibition to savour and relish. l
Emmanuel Cooper
Garden and Cosmos continues until August 23
