A Splendid Land: Paintings from Royal Udaipur
Around 1700, artists in Udaipur (a court in northwest India) began creating immersive paintings that convey the mood (bhava) of the city’s palaces, lakes, and mountains. These large paintings and their emphasis on lived experience have never been the focus of an exhibition.
With dazzling paintings on paper and cloth—many on public view for the first time—A Splendid Land reveals how artists visualized emotions, depicted places, celebrated water resources, and fostered personal bonds over 200 years in the rapidly changing political and cultural landscapes of early modern South Asia.
The exhibition is organized as a journey that begins at Udaipur’s center and continues outward: first to the city, then to the countryside, and finally to the cosmos.
This exhibition has been cocurated by Debra Diamond, the Elizabeth Moynihan Curator for South and Southeast Asian Art at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, and Dipti Khera, associate professor, Department of Art History and Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
A Splendid Land: Paintings from Royal Udaipur is organized by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, in collaboration with the City Palace Museum, Udaipur, administered by the Maharana of Mewar Charitable Foundation.
The National Museum of Asian Art gratefully acknowledges support from exhibition cochairs Farhad and Mary Ebrahimi and Dr. Vijay and Ms. Nanda Anand, along with members of the A Splendid Land: Paintings from Royal Udaipur Leadership Council.
The Cleveland Museum of Art’s presentation of A Splendid Land: Paintings from Royal Udaipur is made possible with principal support from Raj and Karen Aggarwal. Additional support is provided by Anne T. and Donald F. Palmer.
All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions. Principal annual support is provided by Michael Frank and the late Pat Snyder and by the late Roy L. Williams. Major annual support is provided by the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Generous annual support is provided by an anonymous supporter, the late Dick Blum and Harriet Warm, Gary and Katy Brahler, Cynthia and Dale Brogan, Dr. Ben and Julia Brouhard, Brenda and Marshall Brown, Mr. and Mrs. Walter R. Chapman Jr., Richard and Dian Disantis, the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust in memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Leigh and Andy Fabens, the Frankino-Dodero Family Fund for Exhibitions Endowment, Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn, Carl T. Jagatich, Cathy Lincoln, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, William S. and Margaret F. Lipscomb, Bill and Joyce Litzler, Carl and Lu Anne Morrison, Jeffrey Mostade and Eric Nilson and Varun Shetty, Tim O’Brien and Breck Platner, William J. and Katherine T. O’Neill, Henry Ott-Hansen, the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation, and Margaret and Loyal Wilson.
