On parade

The Maharajah of Alwar believed that status symbols should make a mark. No wonder he commissioned a painting eight metres long, says Matthew Thomas

A royal procession with Jai Singh Prabhakar, Maharajah of Alwar, c. 1903-1909. Estimate: £200,000 - 300,000 ($250,000 - 400,000)

Devotees of Indian paintings will be familiar with the depictions of princes and rulers, generally on horseback, surrounded by an entourage of courtiers (also on horses) and attendants (on foot) bearing parasols, standards, swords and lances. But these are almost always miniatures. Few people will have seen anything as large, or as magnificent, as the long processional painting, dated between 1903 and 1909, that forms the centrepiece of the India in Art sale at Bonhams London in June. At more than eight metres long, and in six separate sections, it is a physical expression of hereditary kingship, wealth and status. It was commissioned by Jai Singh Prabhakar, who reigned from 1892 to 1937 as the Maharajah of Alwar in northern Rajasthan. He sits loftily enthroned on an elephant in one of the panels.

Here the artist, R Sahai – his name is the only thing we know about him, subordinated as he was to the ruler he served – has given us a procession. It is a painting fit for a Mughal emperor, or a European monarch. The courts of Rajasthan had developed a genre of paintings significantly larger than those found in the rest of India: paintings on cloth, starkly depicting tiger hunts and the aftermath; large landscapes on paper, showing a maharajah and his entourage with their beaters as small figures amid trees and hills like those seen here, demonstrating the beauty and fertility of their land. This work fits squarely into that mould, but is also in the Mughal tradition of long processions tailing off into the distance, the emperor or nawab raised above the rest on an elephant. Like many earlier Rajasthani examples, this painting records and commemorates an actual event: the procession to the Durbar (a sort of feudal state’s council), which took place three times a year, making its way down from the royal residence, Moti Doongri – the white colonnaded palace in the hills (bizarrely modelled on a Scottish castle).

The procession’s destination, the centre of the town, is barely visible behind a grove of trees in the fourth panel. At the front are the standard bearers, mounted on three elephants, holding the coat of arms and Alwar state flags. Following behind come mounted infantry on camels and horses with cannon; three lines of four elephants led by musicians, mahouts and the small royal howdah; regular infantry in blue and red coats; infantry bands; lancers; Maharajah Jai Singh and his entourage; and mounted dignitaries and ministers. Then comes the horse-drawn landau, looking oddly out of place, as if a VW Beetle had found its way into the painting. Sitting chunkily beside it is the remarkable, surreal-looking royal elephant carriage (rath), seen in a photograph recording the visit by the Viceroy, Lord Elgin, to Alwar in 1897. At the end of the column are mounted lancers and the rearguard with the state flag.

Royal elephant carriage for Lord Elgin’s viceregal visit to Alwar in 1897

The Maharajah of Alwar was entitled, under the British dispensation, to receive a 15-gun salute (second-tier compared to Bikaner and Jodhpur on 17, Bhopal and Indore on 19, and Hyderabad, Gwalior and Mysore on 21). Alwar’s lancers had served Britain in the First World War, and Jai Singh had been created Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire in 1919. Rumour had it that, despite his great status, the Maharajah had been treated rudely when visiting the Rolls-Royce showroom in London, and so, in revenge, ordered a fleet of cars and used them in Alwar – for collecting rubbish. He had a dozen long-wheelbase Hispano-Suizas modified for shikari (hunting), with spotlights and revolving chairs for the hunters’ convenience. The interiors of his cars were lined with French tapestries rather than leather, which speaks both of Hindu devoutness and (let us admit) of sheer indulgence.

This was, of course, an age when royal and imperial pomp reached new heights – we think of the coronation and funeral processions of Europe, of early films of the Kaiser, Queen Victoria, Edward VII or the Tsar with their nodding horses and salutes. Such events and their portrayal become more grandiose – Victoria’s Jubilee of 1897, and the Delhi Durbars of 1903 and 1911 – even as a more democratic age was being ushered in.

But, as Kipling reminds us in his poem ‘Recessional’, nothing lasts forever, and the line: ‘The tumult and the shouting dies;/The Captains and the Kings depart’ could have been written about the Maharajah, whose conspicuous consumption ultimately led to his downfall. He emptied the Alwar treasury, and the taxes he imposed to refill his confers led to unpopularity. Uprisings among the farming population followed, and eventually the British removed his control over the money, installing a British civil servant as Prime Minister. By 1933, the Maharajah had been forced into exile. He died in Paris in 1937, at the age of 54. His body was returned to Alwar for a muted state funeral, a far cry from the colourful processions that marked his reign. It was a sad end for a man who is said to have been, in his quieter moments, a person of some substance, a student of Hindu philosophy, a fine orator and a fierce patriot.

The eight-metre masterpiece speaks of kingship, of maharajahs, of wealth – but there is also a subtext, of the background to such fabulous, not to say obscene, wealth, and the eventual fate of such pomp. The troops, the elephants, the horses, the palaces – all are symbols of a world that was swept away not long afterwards, both in India and in Europe.

Matthew Thomas is Senior Specialist of the Islamic and Indian Art Department, and Head of Sale for India in Art.