A thunderous tryst, India, Rajasthan, Bundi, circa 1760

Ex-private collection, UK, since the 1950s

This depiction of two lovers reuniting for a clandestine tryst is a popular subject in Kota and Bundi painting from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The present work depicts a warrior climbing a fortress to meet his lover unbeknownst to the sleeping guards while a storm approaches. It relates closely to a painting dated to 1760, sold in these rooms - see Sotheby's, London, Indian Miniatures: the Property of the British Rail Pension Fund, 26 April 1994, lot 14. Two later paintings dated to the early and mid-nineteenth century offer a particularly playful depiction of the same scene, see Sotheby's, London, 16 October 1996, lot 85 & 23 May 2006, lot 97. They relate to another example published in S.C. Welch's Gods, Kings and Tigers: the Art of Kotah, painted circa 1866-89 (Munich, 1997, pp.208-9, no.67).