Colonial-Period Court Painting and the Case of Bikaner

Molly Emma Aitken, Archives of Asian Art, Volume 67, April, 2017. ©2019 Duke University Press. All Rights Reserved. Nineteenth-century court painters in India’s princely states reconfigured traditional portraiture to address British, Indian courtly and local values and conventions. At Bikaner, a father and son, Rahim and Chotu, experimented with a Continue Reading

The Laud Rāgamālā Album, Bikaner, and the Sociability of Subimperial Painting

The Laud Ragamala Album, Bikaner, and the Sociability of Subimperial Painting is a tale of two present-day “Indiana Joneses”art historian Professor Molly Emma Aitken and Connoisseur Shanane Davis who made an extraordinary discovery regarding the most famous Indian muraqqa (album book with miniature paintings and calligraphy) found in a European Continue Reading

Old Methods in a New Era What can Connoisseurship Tell us about Rukn‐Ud‐Din?

Molly Emma Aitken, Shanane Davis, Yana van Dyke Book Editor(s): Rebecca M. Brown, Deborah S. Hutton First published 26, July, 2012 – Copyright 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Chapter available for purchase following the below link   https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444396355.ch10 Olkaan Nishtah

About us and Olkaan Nishtah

The words Olkaan Nishtah come from the Marwari Rajasthani language of present-day north-west India. When translated into English, Olkaan Nishtah means, loyalty, elegance, devotion, dedication, faith, and adherence as a connoisseur.  What does this mean and why is it important to us and to others? The founders of Olkaan Nishtah come from families that Continue Reading