PROBABLY LUCKNOW OR FAIZABAD, EAST INDIA, EARLY 19TH CENTURY

Details

RADHA AND KRISHNA MEETING IN A GARDEN
PROBABLY LUCKNOW OR FAIZABAD, EAST INDIA, EARLY 19TH CENTURY
Gouache with gold on paper, depicting Radha and Krishna embracing in a garden pavilion under a stormy sky, with floral borders, within polychrome rules and pink margins
Painting: 8 ½ x 10 1/8 in. (21.6 x 25.7 cm.)
Folio: 9 ¾ x 11 5/8 in. (24.7 x 29.6 cm.)

Provenance

Lucy Truman Aldrich, Providence, Rhode Island.
Acquired from the estate of the above, September 1955.

Literature

R. Ellsworth et al., The David and Peggy Rockefeller Collection: Arts of Asia and Neighboring Cultures, New York, 1993, vol III, p. 295, no. 224.

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Lot Essay

This depiction has many of the features associated with the painting of Jaipur; the stiffness, the slightly stumpy figures and the detailing of the background with the very dense birds; see for example the outstanding Jaipur painting of Krishna and the gopis sheltering from the rain in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Steven Kossak, Indian Court Painting, 16th-19th centuries, New York, 1997, no.71, p.114-5). The very strongly centralized composition however and formal depiction is more typical of the provincial Mughal centres of Lucknow and Faizabad whose paintings, particularly architectural compositions, are strictly symmetric; the figures, as here, are also equally stiff and with small-featured faces more like those found here.

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