Buffaloes in Combat

Of all the Rajput schools of painting, Bikaner was the most influenced by the Mughal style. Mughal artists excelled in animal studies and were particularly adept at imbuing their subjects with a pronounced degree of realism. A Mughal, circa 1590 painting depicting the same subject, now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, illustrated in Amina Okada, Indian Miniatures of the Mughal Court, New York, no. 154, p. 13, captures the chaos and energy of the fight with the beasts spinning in a vortex and their handlers scattered helter skelter around them. The present painting is a far more formalized composition but Mughal influence is manifest in the treatment of the faces as well as the delicacy of line and coloring.