Maharaja Madho Singh of Jaipur playing chess, Rajasthan, Jaipur, circa 1760

Opaque watercolour and gold on paper

The Indian Heritage, Court Life & Arts under Mughal Rule, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 1982
India, Art and Culture 1300-1900, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1985

Skelton 1982, p. 60, no. 147
Welch 1985, p. 379, no. 257
Topsfield 2000, no. 10, p. 9-10

Losses to upper section and edges, visible in catalogue illustration, areas of loss and rubbing to bolster and turban of upper courtier, cracquelure to face of lower courtier, as viewed.
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Maharaja Madho Singh is depicted resting against bolsters on a charpoi playing chess with three of his courtiers whilst one of his attendant massages his foot and another swings the punkah.

In the catalogue accompanying the 1985 exhibition India, Art and Culture 1300-1900, Cary Welch discussed this painting as follows:
"The artist composed this unusually intimate view of royalty at rest in the white-on-whites of marble, chuna (polished lime), and muslin, relieved by brightly colored, richly patterned stuffs, gold, and jewels. Seeing him thus at ease, one might not realize that Maharaja Madho Singh was an active, effective ruler, admired as a patron of science and learning. Had not dysentery cut short his reign after seventeen years, Madho Singh might have resolved the chief problem of the Jat rulers of Bharatpur and prevented the splitting-off from Jaipur of Alwar." (Welch 1985, p. 379)

Andrew Topsfield pointed out that "The soothing cool whites and pale greys of the interior, deriving from Mughal painting under Muhammad Shah, are disposed in a pattern of formal rectangles, offset by the diagonals of the bed and chessboard and the thin line of the punkah rope. Within this sparely delineated, neutral interior there is a subtle observation of the relationship between the dominant figure of the Raja and his subservient ring of opponents and attendants." (Topsfield 2000, p.10)