OPIUM EATERS CONFUSED BY A RAT
INDIA, RAJASTHAN, LATE 18TH CENTURY
£4,284
Auction: 11 December 2024 from 10:00 GMT
Description
ink and gouache on paper, depicting a group of drugged opium eaters confused by the sudden appearance of a large rat, mounted, glazed and framed
Dimensions
26cm x 17.5cm
Provenance
Sotheby’s, Stuart Cary Welch Collection, Part II, 31 May 2011, Lot 27.
Footnote
According to Rosemary Crill who publishes a Jodhpur version of this subject dating to circa 1830-1840, “A group of opium eaters threatening a rat”, in Marwar Painting: A History of the Jodhpur Style, 1999, p. 146, (A group of opium eaters...fig.120), the most popular humorous subjects in 18th century genre scenes were spurious holy men and opium addicts. Variations on these themes occur in most Rajasthani schools, and examples are also found in the provincial Mughal and Pahari schools. Although it is not clear where the fashion started, it must derive from some popular story, legend or proverb originating in a Mughal cultural milieu, concerning the comical confusion of drug addicts, as found also in the common bhang drinkers genre subject, bhang being a drink containing cannabis. Mughal pictures lack the element of ridicule, which is always present in Rajput caricatures, which bring out the grotesque.
In the painting at Jodhpur Fort, a group of typically inept misfits brandish swords and guns at a rat that sits with total unconcern under a tree. A horse is seen in the lower left corner, grazing with an air of great contentment; it seems to be faring much better than the skinny horse in the Ajmer picture or any of the opium addicts in these pictures. The pathetic emaciated horse is found in a number of Mughal and Persian prototypes, for example the miserable horse by Basawan illustrated in Stuart Cary Welch, Indian Drawings and Painted Sketches: 16th through 19th centuries, 1976, pp. 36-37, no. 8. The emaciated horse is usually a symbol of the nafs or the lower soul. Our picture does not include a horse.
A closely related Jaipur or Mewar variant with three emaciated horses in the Museum Rietberg, Zurich, is published in Ludwig V. Habighorst, Peter A., Reichart and Vijay Sharma, Love for Pleasure: Betel, Tobacco, Wine and Drugs in Indian Miniatures, 2007, pp. 112-113, fig. 74. Two opium eaters are galloping towards the mouse on thin nags. Habighorst observes that with this silly metaphor of the hunt of a mouse, the effects of drug misuse are illustrated with biting, sarcastic humour - signs of bodily decay and the inability to perceive reality.
A Pahari version, probably from Kulu circa 1800, is illustrated in Kalpana Desai and Pratapaditya Pal, A Centennial Bouquet: The Khandalavala Collection of Indian Art in the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, 2004, pp. 188-189, cat. no. 97.