382 pages, hardback, 310 x 230 cm, 272 illustrations
PRICE: £50.00
ISBN: 978 3 907077 03 0
The Maharanas of Mewar in Rajasthan have long been regarded as pre-eminent among the Rajput chiefs of India and as dedicated guardians of social and cultural tradition. The Mewar school of painting, centred first at Chitor and later at Udaipur, was one of the most vigorous and prolific of all Indian court styles. It reveals an unrivalled continuity of development from the 16th century or earlier until as late as the 1940s.
In recent times, much of the huge production of Udaipur artists from 1614 to 1948 has become available for study in museum, library and private collections both at Udaipur and elsewhere in India, Europe, America and Australia. This book presents the most comprehensive account hitherto of the development of the Mewar school, from its obscure beginnings in the pre-Mughal Early Rajput style to the successive phases of manuscript illustration and court portraiture at Udaipur, which evolved in reaction first to Mughal stylistic influences and later to the exotic challenges of European art and photography.
The formative patronage of Maharanas Jagat Singh I (1628–52) and Amar Singh II (1698–1710) among others is discussed, as well as that of less artistically discerning rulers. The achievements of the leading court painters are also appraised, from Sahibdin in the 17th century to Chokha, Tara, Sivalal and others in the 19th to 20th centuries. Andrew Topsfield is Curator of Indian Art at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. He is the author of many publications on Rajasthani painting and related subjects. This monograph is a revised version of his Oxford University doctoral thesis.
This study examines the hundreds of secular and religious buildings, urban residential and commercial foundations, and public monuments commissioned in Lucknow and Oudh between 1722 and 1856 by the fabulously rich Nawabs of Oudh and their Court, the English East India Company, and others. More
The Museum Rietberg in Zurich possesses an old and important collection of Southeast Asian sculpture, but until now it has never been fully documented and analysed. It includes stone statues from the Cham culture of Vietnam, examples of which can otherwise only be seen in the Cham Museum in Da Nang and the Musée Guimet in Paris; sculptures of the Khmer from Cambodia which are among the earliest artefacts of this culture collected in Europe; and statues from Thailand and Indonesia. More
Around 1800, an anonymous engraver in Sharanakula, a small temple place on the southern coast of Orissa, illustrated a palm-leaf anthology of love poems. The one hundred Sanskrit quatrains, which are said to be the work of the 7th-century poet Amaru, describe the behaviour of enamoured couples, their longing for each other, the lovers’ anxieties, their ecstatic joy as well as their doubts and sorrows. More
Kannon, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, is probably Japan’s most popular Buddhist deity. Images of Kannon – who hears the cries for help of all beings in distress – are the main focus of worship in many Japanese temples. This exhibition catalogue presents an exceptional selection of the most beautiful sculptures and paintings from the 7th to the 14th century, some of which have never been seen before outside Japan or which are rarely accessible even to the Japanese public. More
For more than a thousand years, the paths of the Silk Road joined the distant empires of East Asia and the Mediterranean, forming a complex web of trade, pilgrimage and intellectual exchange between China, Central Asia, Persia, Tibet, India, the Near East and Europe. The manuscripts collected in this book provide a sense of the fruitful exchanges as well as bitter struggles in these regions over the centuries. More
Oriental manuscripts were produced literally in hundreds of languages and scripts, on a wide range of materials. These range from modest palm-leaf books to grand volumes published on paper produced for the Mughal Emperors. Among the many items included in this catalogue is a complete Tibetan scroll of the early 8th century from the Dun Huang, a Devimahatmya of the eleventh century, perhaps the oldest copy of this celebrated text to survive... More
This unique book is a compilation of the rituals and ceremonies observed by the royal family of Kotah. It is intended to benefit not only future generations of the Kotah family, but also those wanting to catch a glimpse behind the scenes otherwise hidden from the observer. More
Endowed with a sharp eye, a brillant technique, and a refined sense for colours, Nainsukh is one of the most skilled artists of 18th century India. This brochure, meant to delight the eyes and the curiosity of general reader, informs about Nainsukh and his followers and shows thirty of their outstanding paintings which form the core of the Rietberg’s collection of Pahari paintings... More
According to a 1754 inscription, the ruling Rajah Umed Singh of Chamba commissioned this extraordinarily ornate wooden temple, and two artists, Gurdev and Jhanda, carried out the work. Despite the difficulty of gaining access to the shrine, 2,300 m above sea level, the quality of these highly regarded reliefs is unique – nothing comparable in Chamba managed to withstand the fires and wars at the end of the 18th century. This book thoroughly publicises this important Hindu structure for the first time. More
This catalogue discusses and illustrates a wide variety of Chinese books, dating from the sixth to the nineteenth century -- some very rare. More
This extraordinary publication represents a landmark in both Tibetan studies and the art of bookmaking. It presents for the first time two magnificent eighteenth-century manuscripts illuminating in exquisite detail the essential but little-known practices of elemental divination as described in The White Beryl – an important seventeenth-century treatise written by Sangs-rgyas rGya-mtsho (1653–1705), the rekowned polymath who was regent to the Fifth Dalai Lama. More
First published a quarter-century ago in German, Dietrich Seckel’s essay remains a vital contribution to a much-debated feature of Buddhist art, its aniconism, its aversion to depicting spiritual entities of the very highest order. More
After Andrew Topsfield’s recent study Court Painting at Udaipur, which was welcomed by scholars as the definitive research on the Mewar school for long, we are proud to present a monograph on two Devgarh artists that covers the lesser known artistic developments of the history of Mewar painting. This publication focuses on two master-artists, Bagta and his son Chokha, who worked first for the prestigious court of the Maharanas of Udaipur before they became involved with the rawats of Devgarh in the second half of the eighteenth century and nineteenth century respectively. More
The Admiralty Islands, a group of more than twenty islets with approximately 25,000 inhabitants, lie north of New Guinea in the southwest Pacific. This catalogue delineates the main characteristics of the art of the Admiralty Islands. It presents some 100 objects which rank among the best in the world. More
‘Abd al-Rahim, the commander-in-chief of the mughal armies and a great bibliophile, was the most important patron of Mughal painting outside the imperial family. John Seyller presents the seven illustrated manuscripts commissioned by this eminent noble and places them in the context of imperial Mughal painting and patronage at the beginning of the 17th century. This book provides a nuanced picture of the interaction among artists in a series of collaborative projects and an original and thoughtful analysis of patronage in Mughal India. More