The jazz-loving, Oxford-educated Maharaja Yeshwant Rao Holkar II discovered Art Deco style on his frequent visits to Paris, where he posed for Boutet de Monvel in the artist’s apartment. In 1929. the collector, aesthete and writer Henri-Pierre Roché had introduced him to the couturier and art collector Jacques Doucet, who in turn introduced him to modern artists and interior designers. The photographer Man Ray described the Maharaja as ‘young, tall and very elegant’.

In 1930, he built a streamlined Modernist palace in Indore to house his growing art collection. Boutet de Monvel was a fashion illustrator as well as a painter, and the Maharaja’ s insouciant pose echoes the elegant ease of contemporary fashion plates, while the portrait’s grand scale links it to the European Grand Manner tradition. The monochrome linearity of his formal eveningwear, framed by an ebonised chimneypiece, exudes Art Deco luxury and restraint. In the same year, Boutet de Monvel painted the Maharaja in traditional princely Indian dress—consisting of a turban, jama, sword, and Chaumet diamond lavalier—as well as companion portraits of his wife, the Maharani. When she died in 1937, at the age of 22, the ‘modern Maharaja’ gave up his collecting ambitions.