Page 87 - Indian and Himalayan Art Mar 21, 2018 NYC

345
AN ILLUSTRATION FROM THE ‘SHANGRI’ RAMAYANA:
A MONKEY, PROBABLY SUGRIVA, INSTRUCTS
HIS FOLLOWERS
KULU OR POSSIBLY BAHU (JAMMU), STYLE III, NORTH INDIA,
1700-1720
Opaque pigment on paper heightened with gold, the reverse inscribed in
devanagari ‘106 Kishkindha’
Painting 7º x 12¿ in. (18.4 x 30.7 cm.); folio 8Ω x 13Ω in. (21.6 x 34.3 cm.)
$25,000-35,000
PROVENANCE
Mandi Royal Collection.
Private collection, Germany.
The ‘Shangri’ Ramayana was frst brought to public attention by M. S.
Randhawa who published it in 1959 (Basohli Painting, Delhi, 1959). At that
time he described 270 folios that were in the possession of Raja Raghbir
Singh in Shangri, the place that gave the series its name. Since that time
it has been recognized as one of the most important illustrative series
in early Pahari painting. Following on from Raja Raghbir Singh and his
family verbal tradition, W.G. Archer devoted many pages of his magnum
opus to this series of paintings, attributing it to Kulu (W. G. Archer, Indian
Paintings from the Punjab Hills, London, New York and Delhi, 1973, pp.325-
9; vol.II, pp.238-243, nos.1(I)-5(iii)). Some subsequent authors have
disputed the putative origin, suggesting Bahu, but the majority of recent
scholars have reverted to Archer’s original suggestion.
Archer divided the paintings into four diferent styles; this is in his Style III
where he notes that the depiction of the monkeys is “impish” in paintings
that are universally full of “bold gusto” (op.cit., p.328). In his discussion
of the paintings in the Kronos Collection Terence McInerney notes “The
illustrated folios painted in Style III are perhaps the most narratively
efective in the entire series. Background accoutrements are reduced to
a bare minimum, the fgures are lithe and fast-moving, and the narrative
action is always clear.” (Terence McInerney et al, Divine Pleasures, Painting
from India’s Rajput Courts, The Kronos Collection, New York, 2016, p.170).
A very substantial proportion of the series, 168 folios, are in the National
Museum, New Delhi. Other examples are in a number of collections
including the Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi, the British Library, London,
the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Rietberg Museum, Zurich,
the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine
Arts, the San Diego Museum of Arts (Edwin Binney 3rd Collection), the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art
and the Portland Museum of Art as well as in many private collections. A
painting with similar subject, composition and style was the Lustration of
Sugriva from the Khosrovani Diba Collection sold at Sotheby’s London, 19
October 2016, lot 26.

85