Many regions of India hold a very distinctive idiom or style of painting that is fairly identifiable if you have followed and hold interest in the subject. Mandi, currently in Himachal Pradesh, north India is one such region with a fairly distinct visual style and vocabulary, with the use of bold & brilliant colors, distinguishing facial types and great presence of characters depicted. Within the borders of this painting is a teeming group of men holding animated expressions huddled in a conversation.
Under a marquee tent, our protagonist Raja Surma Sen (r.1781-88) of Mandi grants audience to two visitors. The iconography of his elevated status marked by the peacock feather fan and hookah bearers besides him. Note the grey background created for the central 3 characters that allows their faces to be viewed clearly. Perhaps the two visitors are important, I am unable to decipher the text on the scroll proffered by the sitter next to the ruler. Mandi paintings truly delight with an immediacy and vitality that seem to encourage us to enter the frame and join in on the conspiratorial conversation.
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