Thakur Padam Singh

Padam Singh ruled over the small town of Ghanerao, on the borders between Mewar and Marwar in Rajasthan, from 1720 to 1742. He was an enthusiastic patron of painting, and several portraits of him and his courtiers survive. This one has a rather informal setting, and shows Padam Singh seated in the centre of a group of nobles armed with rifles and daggers, a musician, a bearer with a peacock-feather fan and several dogs. He is facing a female attendant who offers him a wine-cup.

An inscription on the reverse of the painting states that it was done by an artist named Manno in AD 1721, at Ajmer. The style of the painting (which is basically a rather unrefined version of the Jodhpur court style) suggests that Manno was an artist from Ghanerao rather than Ajmer, who perhaps had accompanied his master on a hunting expedition to Ajmer.