For India's kings, the hunt was sport, training for war and a show of power all at once. The Akbarnama shows Akbar's great ring hunts, where thousands of beaters drove animals into a closing circle. A century later, the painters of Kota made shikar their speciality. They set their Maharaos among thick, tangled forests, waiting on a tiger with a rifle, riding down a boar or facing a lion on foot.
These are paintings full of nerve and movement, with dust in the air, horses at full stretch and every leaf in the jungle alive.
The Hunting Scenes Collection brings the world long gone, in the Mughal and Rajput manner.
