There are always too many new art exhibitions for one person to fathom, but this year some just cry out to be seen. “A Splendid Land: Paintings from Royal Udaipur” at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C., is at the top of my list. Co-curated by the museum’s Debra Diamond and Dipti Khera of NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, the show brings together 80 transformative large-scale paintings from the 18^th century that have never been seen outside India. They reveal the moment when a number of Indian painters invented a new art form that captured the mood and emotional undercurrents of a particular place, Udaipur, whose lakes and palaces and rolling hillsides make it one of India’s most magical cities. Any artist working today will benefit richly from seeing this show (through May 14).