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Lot Essay
This painting illustrates the celebration of the spring festival Holi depicted within an ambience of mirth and love. At center, a loving couple embrace mid-stroll, sharing tender glances with each other. They are surrounded by an audience dominated by women, who peer towards the couple with a shared intimacy or convey affection between themselves. Themes of pink and orange prevail in tone, capturing the magenta powder covering the courtyard's floor and the turmeric-infused bath along the foreground of the painting. The festival was celebrated in royal courts of Mughal emperors and Rajput rulers, where didactic recordings of these composite Hindu and Muslim cultural celebrations were illuminated by artists of various schools. Of paintings sharing the theme, some highlight the ecstatic energy arising from flinging colored powders and water towards each other (see The Cleveland Museum of Art (2018.104) and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M.81.280.2), while others intensify feelings of shared love and tenderness with quiet restraint set amid a colorful celebration.
This painting captures the latter, with the loving couple anchoring the narrative, a feature shared in other amorous portrayals of this motif. In some instances, the couple is represented by the god and goddess, Krishna and Radha (National Museum of Asian Art, F1907.255 and Art Gallery of New South Wales, 36.2010) and in other examples, like the one here, they are portrayed holding royal status amid a court of females (Christie's, London, 10 June 2013, lot 146; The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013.342). Their flirtatious reverie is depicted between glassy gazes of longing and open displays of affection, as they have both let go of their inhibitions in the midst of these festivities (Harn Museum of Art, 2013.342).
The couple is presented within a royal courtyard with a canopied portico set in the background. The turmeric-filled vat and heaps of pink powder are indicative of the festival itself, seen in several of the aforementioned examples, though this image most closely resembles the format of the Harn Museum of Art painting. They share an almost identical arrangement of the orange canopied portico set behind a fountain in the background and a pink powdered-covered terrace with a woman leaning over the yellow bath of water to fill her spray syringe in the foreground. While the two toned pink and orange color motif highlight the environment of these Holi depictions, in this example, the terrace and all the figures are almost entirely of variations of these colors, giving off an enveloping sunset glow to the painting.
The verso, a calligraphic panel with floral border, closely relates to imperial albums associated with the later part of the reign of Shah Jahan (r. 1628-58). The lines of calligraphy are framed within cloud-shaped panels set along a gold ground filled with floral arabesques. Borders of peach and blue surround the calligraphy, each decorated with golden filigree, and further surrounded by a thick border of large stylized flowers of poppies, narcissus, iris and tulips set over gold. A calligraphic panel from the dispersed album of Shah Jahan from the sixteenth century shares both color and arrangement with this example (J.P. Losty, Of Royal Patronage: Indian Paintings from the 16th-19th Centuries, Carlton Rochell Asian Art, p. 34, no.11). Another seventeenth-century Mughal court calligraphy compares in format (National Museum of Asian Art S1986.91).
This painting captures the latter, with the loving couple anchoring the narrative, a feature shared in other amorous portrayals of this motif. In some instances, the couple is represented by the god and goddess, Krishna and Radha (National Museum of Asian Art, F1907.255 and Art Gallery of New South Wales, 36.2010) and in other examples, like the one here, they are portrayed holding royal status amid a court of females (Christie's, London, 10 June 2013, lot 146; The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013.342). Their flirtatious reverie is depicted between glassy gazes of longing and open displays of affection, as they have both let go of their inhibitions in the midst of these festivities (Harn Museum of Art, 2013.342).
The couple is presented within a royal courtyard with a canopied portico set in the background. The turmeric-filled vat and heaps of pink powder are indicative of the festival itself, seen in several of the aforementioned examples, though this image most closely resembles the format of the Harn Museum of Art painting. They share an almost identical arrangement of the orange canopied portico set behind a fountain in the background and a pink powdered-covered terrace with a woman leaning over the yellow bath of water to fill her spray syringe in the foreground. While the two toned pink and orange color motif highlight the environment of these Holi depictions, in this example, the terrace and all the figures are almost entirely of variations of these colors, giving off an enveloping sunset glow to the painting.
The verso, a calligraphic panel with floral border, closely relates to imperial albums associated with the later part of the reign of Shah Jahan (r. 1628-58). The lines of calligraphy are framed within cloud-shaped panels set along a gold ground filled with floral arabesques. Borders of peach and blue surround the calligraphy, each decorated with golden filigree, and further surrounded by a thick border of large stylized flowers of poppies, narcissus, iris and tulips set over gold. A calligraphic panel from the dispersed album of Shah Jahan from the sixteenth century shares both color and arrangement with this example (J.P. Losty, Of Royal Patronage: Indian Paintings from the 16th-19th Centuries, Carlton Rochell Asian Art, p. 34, no.11). Another seventeenth-century Mughal court calligraphy compares in format (National Museum of Asian Art S1986.91).