This nim qalam (half-pen) lightly tinted drawing is attributed to the poet painter Svarupa Rama (active 1801-1834) who may have worked in Deogarh (or Devgarh), a feudatory subclan (thikana) of Mewar, Rajasthan. He is known for sensitive portraits of ascetics and animals, a distinctive heavily shaded style, and impressionistic tree foliage. In this painting, three ascetics wearing red loincloths are seated in animated postures on a yellow rug in front of a pavilion. The two outer ascetics have curly hair, similar to a European man in a Mewar painting attributed to circa 1760–1775 (M.87.159.1a b). The middle ascetic wears a skull cap. One ascetic holds a pet bird on a tether. The ascetics are accompanied by four saluki dogs represented in dynamic poses beside them. A comparable portrait by Svarupa Rama of an ascetic seated with a courtly woman dog and a dog (as well as a cat) is in the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (1998.42.43). Additional paintings by Svarupa Rama with idiosyncratic animal portraits, including a signed work, were in the Dr. and Mrs. William K. Ehrenfeld Collection, San Francisco (see Daniel Ehnbom, Indian Miniatures: The Ehrenfeld Collection, 1985, pp. 122-125, nos. 55-56).
