Page 88 - Indian and Himalayan Art, March 15, 2017 Sotheby's NYC

281 A mysterious yogini holds a large gold chevron-design fan,
encircling her head like a halo. Her hair is pulled back behind
PROPERTY FROM THE LANIER COLLECTION her into an oval topknot and loosely cascades in thin curls
down her shoulders. She wears a transparent white muslin
A YOGINI HOLDING A FAN waistcoat over mauve gold-pattern paijamas. A patchwork
India, Deccan, Bijapur, circa 1610 -1620 purple and gold shawl over one shoulder and multiple strands
of pearls. A small sheathed knife and amulets hang from her
Opaque watercolor heightened with gold on paper red belt. She stands in isolation against a brilliant emerald-
image: 5¼ by 6¾ in. (12.7 by 15.2 cm) verdigris ground.
folio: 8¾ by 6¾ in. (20.3 by 15.2 cm)
Mounted on a Nineteenth Century album folio with two foliate
PROVENANCE inner borders between ink and gold foil ruled lines. Orange
Acquired 1990 outer borders with gold scrolling ower and leaf designs.

$ 15,000-20,000 Part Su or part Shaivite saint? We do not know the identity
of this lovely yogini who may have been a princess with her
strands of pearls and ornaments - her gilt-edged fan set with
jewels - but who now appears a renunciate and solitary in her
pose. It is her ethereal quality that mesmerizes us - she seems
to stand haloed somewhere between heaven and earth.

This beautiful painting represents the discovery of a previously
unrecorded depiction of a Yogini from early Seventeenth
Century Bijapur. It may be attributable to the Mughal and
Persian-trained Deccani artist Farrukh Husain (also known
as Farrukh Beg) based upon similarities to other works
inscribed or attributed to him. A painting attributed to him, in
the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London,
depicts a “Groom Calming His Horse” (M. Zebrowski, Deccani
Painting, London, 1983, pp. 98-99) which shares its glowing
emerald-green shaded ground, superbly rendered gure
types with oval shaped heads and delicate facial shading. A
related painting “Saraswati Plays on a Vina” in the City Palace
Museum Jaipur bears an inscription: “humble Farrukh Husain
painter of Ibrahim ‘Adil-Shah” and depicts a yogini-like female
holding a vina. Datable to circa 1604 it also shows an oval
head and shaded face, with sections of a similarly shaded
emerald green color (N. Haidar and M. Sardar, Sultans of the
South: Arts of India’s Deccan Courts 1323-1687, New York, 2011
p. 34-37). These two compositions contain complex landscape
and architectural elements - unlike our own yogini depicted
against a at green ground - but the meticulous detail and
mysterious air of the works are comparable.

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86 SOTHEBY’S