KRISHNA DANCING AND OTHER FIGURES, PROBABLY ORISSA, CIRCA EARLY 18TH CENTURY

Opaque watercolour on cloth, reverse with a drawing of a mythological lion

Worn around edges and corners with loss of gesso and pigments. Further craquelure extending into picture area with one patch of pigment/gesso loss at upper centre. As viewed.
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This interesting picture comes from a group of sketches and unfinished works which were probably produced in Orissa in the early 18th century. Two others, also painted on gesso-prepared cloth, are in the Jagdish and Kamla Mittal Museum, Hyderabad. They were exhibited in the 1985 exhibition India, Art and Culture 1300-1900 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in the accompanying catalogue Jagdish Mittal suggests a link with the artist community at Puri, where painters produced sophisticated works for court patrons as well as murals and pilgrimmage paintings featuring Hindu deities and illustrations to Hindu texts (see Welch 1985, pp.64-65, no.27).