BILASPUR, NORTH INDIA, CIRCA 1740

Our painting draws from an earlier Mankot Ahiri Ragini dated to the first quarter of the 18th century now in the Boston Museum of Fine Art. The attitude of the devotee, her features and her dress remind the figure of Vishnu’s consort and the gopis painted on works published in Milo C. Beach, Eberhard Fischer, B.N. Goswamy ed., Masters of Indian Painting 1650-1900, London, 2011, fig.3-5, pp. 507-509. Another close parallel to our painting is a series of Pahari musical modes from Basohli kept in Berlin, Waldschmidt, E. Miniatures of Musical Modes Inspiration in the Collection of the Berlin Museum of Indian Art, part 1, fig. 44).

For another painting from the same series, see lot 62.