A fortnight ago, history researcher Prasad Sudhir Tare checked his email early in the morning and noticed that a museum in France had sent him a thumbnail of a painting by Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj that was previously unknown in India. “At that time I felt that I was standing before the king. I bowed. I was overwhelmed to think of the artist who stood and worked in front of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj,” says Tare, who heads the Bharat Itihasika Shodhak Mandal. are members.
The Golconda style of painting was created when Chhatrapati visited the ruler of Golconda in 1677. It shows Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj standing, his full figure depicted in side profile with a long tunic, a cap adorned with pearls and gold, and a dagger at his side. “The beauty of these paintings is that they use natural colors and small amounts of real gold and show us how clothes and weapons were in those days,” says Tare.
Back in 2001, the star had just graduated, when she got a small role in Shivshahr Babasaheb Purandare’s iconic Marathi stage drama Janata Raja on the life and adventures of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. The play strengthened the star’s fascination with the Marathi warrior king and set him on a research path. On a personal visit to Europe in 2011, Tare chanted the first reference to the possible existence of 17th-century miniatures of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in regional styles such as the Golconda School, which were preserved by the courts of that era. “I began discovering these artifacts while being in contact with museums, curators, and collectors in Europe and America,” he says.
In the late 17th century, when the art flourished in India under court patronage, a large number of portraits of rulers and other personalities were created. Companies from eastern India, Dutch, English and French, were doing business in the country at that time.
“The Europeans were good at collecting works of art, and the people of India were very valuable to them. Their envoys, ambassadors and other officials would collect albums that contained 30-40 works of Indian art and send them back home. where they found their way into private collections, museums, and royal treasuries,” Tare says.
Four months ago, Tare had his first breakthrough when he received three miniature contemporary paintings of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj – from a private collector in France, a museum in Germany and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the US – which were hitherto unknown in India.
These rare images of the original paintings will be part of a book on the king in which the star aims to highlight two aspects, the historical side and the application of history to the present day.
Maharaj was famous not only as a king but also as a warrior. He built his kingdom despite opposition from six powerful rulers like the Mughals, Adil Shahi and Qutb Shahi,” says Tare. “I have read how he was able to connect with different people and share his perspective with them. One of the British people present in Surat wrote in a letter that when the Maharaja spoke, he seemed to smile… it is a small thing, but a smile is unique to all people. Today, apart from a formality, people are barely welcoming. These are lessons that we can learn from Maharaj’s life and apply in our lives.”
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