As Mughal imperial authority weakened by the late 1600s and the British colonial economy became paramount by the 1830s, new patrons and mobile professionals reshaped urban cultures and artistic genres across early modern India. In iterating exuberant and ephemeral atmospheres of their city of lakes, painters from Udaipur viewed the moods of places as open to adaptation, admiration, and assimilation. Drawing upon the recently published book The Place of Many Moods: Udaipur’s Painted Lands and India’s Eighteenth Century, this talk will discuss pictures of pleasure, plentitude, and praise that sought to stir such emotions as love, awe, abundance, and wonder. Their memorialized moods confront the ways colonial histories have recounted Oriental decadence, emphasizing the senses, spaces, and sociability essential to the efficacy of objects and expressions of territoriality.
