AN ILLUSTRATION TO A RAGAMALA SERIES: VIBHASA RAGINI

Estimate

4,000 - 6,000 USD

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Description

AN ILLUSTRATION TO A RAGAMALA SERIES: VIBHASA RAGINI
Opaque watercolor heightened with gold on paper
image: 8 3/8 by 5 1/2 in. (21.3 by 14 cm);
folio: 10 3/4 by 7 3/4 in. (27.3 by 19.6 cm) unframed

Catalogue Note

Curled with his beloved against a green bolster on a yellow covered bed a lord bows his flower-tipped arrow. Two peacocks, one in a curious splayed-leg stance, observe and caw from the colorful parapets above as morning begins to break. The awning to their bedroom rolled open to reveal golden vessels and refreshments spread out on the orange carpeted floor beneath them.

A lovely and colorfully vibrant miniature perhaps attributable to the atelier of Sheikh Taju a Kotah master with a prolific studio. One characteristic of miniatures from this workshop are the distinctive sharply profiled facial types with beak-like nose and heavy-lidded eyes based on depictions of Maharao Arjun Singh (d. 1723) perhaps the most distinctive face in 18th Century Kotah painting.

Refer to S.C. Welch, Gods, Kings and Tigers : The Art of Kotah, New York, 1997, pp. 47, fig. 9.