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Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum Unveils ‘We the People’ at India Art Fair 2025
New Delhi [India], February 8: To mark the 75th anniversary of India’s Constitution, the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum presents We the People at India Art Fair 2025. This exhibition explores the role of individuals in shaping Indian identity, through rare and significant works of art. While the adoption of the Constitution in 1950 marked [...]
New Delhi [India], February 8: To mark the 75th anniversary of India’s Constitution, the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum presents We the People at India Art Fair 2025. This exhibition explores the role of individuals in shaping Indian identity, through rare and significant works of art.
While the adoption of the Constitution in 1950 marked a definitive moment in India’s democratic history, We the People challenges the conventional narrative that visibility and agency for common citizens emerged only with the Republic. The exhibition offers an alternative story using two remarkable sets of portraits created in Jaipur, and highlights the unexpected significance of a throne – a palace object whose role we think we know well.
In the late 1700s, the court artist Ramji Das produced a singular body of work: a series of watercolour portraits depicting palace servants, from guards and musicians to barbers and nursemaids. These are among the earliest known visual documents of ordinary people in Indian courtly art. Decades later, Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh II (r. 1835–80), a progressive ruler and pioneering photographer, turned his lens on a similar set of subjects — his own attendants and courtiers — capturing them in strikingly intimate and personal portraits.
