Bad Feelings in the Bazaar, attributable to Bhavanidas, Kishangarh, circa 1735

Opaque watercolour on paper

A Flower from Every Meadow, Asia House Gallery, New York; The Center for Asian Art and Culture: Avery Brundage Collection, San Francisco; Albright-Knox Gallery of Art, Buffalo, 1973
Life at Court: Art for India's Rulers, 16th-19th Centuries, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1985-86

Welch 1973, pp.57-58, no.28
Desai 1985, p.122, no.100
Falk 1992, no.3
Welch 1994, p.97, fig.16
Haidar 2000, fig.3, p.81

Painting trimmed along the edges of the image and laid down on paper, with very minor pigment loss along these edges and slight creases on the lower corners of the painting. Some rubbing along the sky-line and flaking on the robes of the courtly figures. In overall good condition, as viewed.
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The small state of Kishangarh became increasingly important to the Mughals during the 17th century. A strong relationship developed between the Raja of Kishangarh and the Mughal Emperor Muhammad Shah. This political allegiance resulted in a cross-pollination of painting styles, an increased interest in the observation of everyday life and the movement of artists from the Mughal atelier to Kishangarh, including Bhavanidas, the probable artist of the present work, who arrived at Kishangarh in 1719.

Cary Welch's description of this picture in the catalogue accompanying the 1973 exhibition A Flower From Every Meadow is as follows:
"While Sawant Singh did not inherit the throne until 1748, and occupied it for only nine years, his influence as a patron of artists and poets must have begun far earlier. One can suppose that the odd character of many Kishangarh pictures - among the weirdest in Indian art - was due to his poetical insights. His paintings, like the Mughal Emperor Jahangir's (r.1605-1627) include quirkily personal subjects, as, for instance, a highly sympathetic study of a hunchback, painted in the most painstaking Mughal style... Ambiguous psychological over- (and under-) tones add depth to the present picture, at once a political satire and a caricature of military and bazaar types. The foppish Rajput officers, one of them seemingly lifted off his feet by a balloon of a shield and propelled by his mustachios, strike terror into the salesmen outside the town gate. A grossly fat spice/grain dealer protects himself with a ham or an arm; while a string-bean-like merchant flees, with a trayload of knick-knacks on his head. At the left, a stark naked boy, big but infantile, rushes out of the picture.
There is wit here, and clowning; but on a very high level. We sense that things are not as they appear. Is the Rajput buoyed by mere ire? And might not the merchant's bloat be more than just fat? - an allusion, for instance, to a special group of holy men at Mathura who gain spirituality, along with substance, through eating generous mounds of puris offered by pilgrims. At times, as here, Rajput paintings enter the mystically comic worlds of Zen or Sufism." (Welch 1973, pp.57-58)

In terms of attribution, a note dated 1988 in Cary Welch's hand on the backboard of the frame states "almost certainly by Nihal Chand". In 1992 Falk attributed this picture to Bhavanidas, the Mughal-trained master who moved to Kishangarh in 1719 and was so influential in establishing the refined style of the atelier in the second quarter of the 18th century (Falk 1992). In 1994 Welch identified the artist as the 'Aurangabadi master', tracing his beginnings in the Deccan and his subsequent employment with Maharaja Raj Singh at Kishangarh (r.1706-48, see Welch 1994, p.99). In 2000 Haidar concurred with Falk's attribution to Bhavanidas (Haidar 2000, pp. 80-81).

Desai commented that "The highly energetic and expressive quality of Bad Feelings in the Bazaar and its focus on the emotional reactions of the tradesmen are unusual in Rajasthani painting. In the mid-eighteenth century, Kishangarh is unique for genre pictures with tremendous verve and sense of humour. Their idiosyncratic qualities may be attributed to Sawant Singh, a ruler known for his passion for poetry and Krishna worship." (Desai 1985, p.122)

The figure of the officer dressed in green holding a shield at right appears in identical pose, with head thrown back, in a single-figure portrait illustrated in Haidar 2000, fig. 4.