Rawat Gokul Das and Rajawat Juvanji (Primary Title)
Chokha, Indian, active ca. 1799 - after 1826 (Artist)
This double portrait is the last-known work by one of India’s most celebrated master painters, Chokha of Devgarh. Younger son of the illustrious Bagta, Chokha assumed his father’s role as primary painter to the court at Devgarh—a small state near Udaipur—around 1811. Devgarh painting is almost entirely devoted to portraiture, and here we see Chokha’s long-term patron. Gokul Das II, ruler of Devgarh, receiving a lesser official. The two men sit on a floral-patterned rug as decoratively treated as the green horizon, pale blue sky, and pink clouds above them. In keeping with traditional India artistic conventions of hierarchical scale, Gokul Das’s size indicates his relative superiority to the petitioner. His immensity, however, is also descriptive, for the British administrator Colonel James Tod wrote, the ruler “was about six feet, perfectly erect, and a Hercules in bulk.”
on verso: In Hindi (giving names of sitters, artist, and date): Maharawatji Sri Gokul Dasji ro surat. Chataro Chokha babat. 1883 jeth sud II. Rajawat Juvanji.
Aldine S. Hartman Endowment Fund
Image released via Creative Commons CC-BY-NC
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