Page 152 - Bonhams Indian and Himalayan Art March 2016 New York

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FOLIO 48 FROM THE KANGRA RASIKAPRIYA:
‘OH FRIEND! UNFORTUNATELY, KRISHNA IS NOT THE LOTUS-LOVER,
AS YOU DESCRIBE HIM’
School of Purkhu, Kangra, circa 1810
Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; verso numbered ‘48’ and inscription designating
Chapter 3, verses 45-47 of the Rasikapriya; verso also with collection stamps and signatures
of Abdur Rahman Chughtai.
Image: 9 7/8 x 6 3/8 in. (25.1 x 16.2 cm), irregular;
Folio: 12 7/8 x 9 1/8 in. (32.7 x 23.2 cm)
$40,000 - 60,000

Couplets 45 and 46 inscribed on the reverse define three types of “Madhyanayika”: a nayika
with a modest amount of experience in love. Firstly, there is the adhira, who lashes out in
response to her man when he comes home from another woman. Secondly, there is the
dhira adhira, who is instead both self-possessed and volatile. And lastly, there is the dhira –
illustrated here – who is the canniest: she knows that the best way to get back at him is a cold
shoulder, or a well-timed sarcastic remark.

‘The longer I joyfully saw his breast, the seat of dalliance, bearing marks, the more the
palpitations in my heart increased. I had a kind of vertigo, as if there were a chill. When I firmly
closed my eyes, imprinted behind them was the face of Mohana, which you had called a lotus,
but which I perceived like the moon’.

Seated on a terrace beside the river Beas, Radha and her duenna converse about Krishna,
who is envisioned as he was the night before, coming home late, guilty and meek. She
complains only in a suggestive way, contradicting the duenna who had called Krishna’s face a
lotus:’I rather perceive it like the moon’ (which waxes and wanes and is tainted by black spots).

The Kangra Rasikapriya, from which this folio comes, is a large series with paintings of varying
quality. Numbered 48, this painting is early in the series and of superior quality. Its large figures
may in fact indicate the hand of Purkhu.

The oval format with yellow margins and floral surrounds is based on the famous
Lambagraon Baramasa. Comparing the riverside terrace and landscape with painting XXII
of the Baramasa shows that they are clearly related (see Randhawa, Kangra Paintings on
Love, New Delhi, 1962, p. 191).

Well known and widely published, see fourteen paintings from the same Kangra
Rasikapriya in the Victoria and Albert Museum, published in Archer, Indian Painting from
the Punjab Hills, 1973, Kangra, no.66 i-vi, pp.305-307. Another was sold at Bonhams,
New York, 19 March 2012, lot 1186 and three folios were sold at Sotheby’s, New York, 20
March 2013, lots 311, 315 & 318.

Provenance
Collection of Abdur Rahman Chughtai (1897-1975)
Private European Collection since 1988

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