An illustration from a Nayak-Nayika series: Vipralabdha Nayika, India, Punjab Hills, Guler, circa 1750

Vipralabdha Nayika depicts the jilted mistress, casting off her jewellery as she waits in vain for her lover. Here she is shown standing next to a bed of leaves and framed by trees, a cool white landscape with a wide river and hilltop town rising up behind her. This exquisite painting represents the Guler school at its height, here the artist demonstrates his adept handling of naturalistic detail, sensitively rendering the Nayika's delicate features, her jewelled ornamentation and the smooth sinuous trees with their gently stippled leaves.

An almost identical version of this painting attributed to one of the son's of Nainsukh is in the Jagdish Mittal Collection (Seyller and Mittal 2014, p.216, no.74). Seyller and Mittal compare the current lot with their painting and conclude that both paintings must have been produced by the same workshop and relate the stylisation of the facial features and treatment of the trees to an earlier painting inscribed by Manaku in the San Diego Museum of Art (Goswamy and Smith 2005, no.91).

Sotheby’s has agreed to pay the Buyer’s Premium received by Sotheby’s on the sale of the Property to the RDJ Foundation.