Credit Line:Promised Gift of Steven Kossak, The Kronos Collections
Accession Number:L.2018.44.7
The early seventeenth century, Mughal style palaces at Orchha and Datia represent the arrival of imperial influence in that part of Central India, an area like Rajasthan or the Punjab Hills that was governed by hereditary Rajput rulers on behalf of the Mughals, yet an area that was culturally distinct from either Rajasthan or the Punjab Hills. The early (seventeenth century) style of Central Indian painting is generally called Malwa painting to signify a flattened, highly colorful and geometric style of Rajput painting, as exemplified by the style of this fine picture. These paintings were probably made in a number of centers in the Malwa region of Central India, a wealthy and fertile part of modern day Madhya Pradesh. In the lower register of this picture a confidante (sakhi) is having a conversation with the disconsolate Radha, who is seated on a white platform and wearing a handsome striped skirt. The empty bedroom to the ladies’ right is furnished with a bed and a useless bolster, and with a horseheaded clothes hook draped with the discarded clothing of Radha’s absent lover. The complicated structures on the roof are reminiscent of imperial, or Mughal architecture, a medley of native and Iranian building forms, and the casual, aristocratic life style which the Mughals and this architecture introduced. These rooftop structures included ornamental towers, staircases, open platforms for lounging, and closed and open pavilions (chhatris) for the pursuit of any kind of pleasure. The artist has used these forms as the foundation for his syncopated arrangement of brightly colored, geometric shapes, the building blocks of his composition. The black sky only accentuates the brilliance of the various colors employed. (For another painting featuring a black sky see cat. no. 16.) For two other paintings from the same Sikapriya series, see Toby Falk et al, Indian Painting (London: P & D Colnaghi & Co Ltd, 1978), no. 83 and Sotheby & Co, 10 October 1977, lot 47.
Inscription: Inscribed on the front in the yellow panel at the top with the Indic number “113.” Inscribed on the reverse (colored yellow) in devanagari script with five lines of Hindi text (for an English translation, see Bahadur 1972, p. 101)
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Divine Pleasures: Painting from India's Rajput Courts—The Kronos Collections," June 13–September 11, 2016.
The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world.
