#bakhta

Bakhta / Bagta, fl.1756 - 1814 Maharana Ari Singh II in Durbar India (1765) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne [Source], [Source]

Milo Cleveland Beach and Rawat Nahar Singh II say:

Maharana Ari Singh in Darbar at Night does manage to surprise, however, but not because of its style. It includes, among the attendants at the far left, a self-portrait by the artist. This is Bagta, and given the visual evidence of his appearance here and his subsequent  long career, he was very young at this time. 

His age may also be reflected in the workmanship. While the design is strong, Bagta's execution of many details is inexperienced, even childlike -note especially many of the faces. The expressions are often skillfully observed - a preview of Bagta's eventual ability to distill and capture the most idiosyncratic traits of appearance and character - but details such as the mouths are (at this early date) often handled ineptly. 

Given these characteristics, the uniformity of style at Udaipur during this period, and the lack of comparable self-portraits, the young Bagta's inclusion of himself in such a scene so early in his career is not only surprising, it is provocative. There is no reason to think that Maharana Ari Singh was any more sympathetic to painting than he was to people; in fact, he seems to have lost all interest in his painters two years later. The inclusion of  this self-portrait, therefore, is almost certainly not a mark of royal esteem for Bagta's artistic skills. It may simply have been self-promotion by a particularly ambitious young painter.

by Bakhta, Asian Art

Medium: Ink and opaque watercolor on paper.

Purchase, Florence and Herbert Irving Gift and Rogers Fund, 1997 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY