AMBER OR JAIPUR, NORTH INDIA, FIRST HALF 18TH CENTURY

This illustration belongs to a ragamala set characterised by its palette of flaming reds and oranges, cool mauves and pale greens, with delicately rendered slender ladies in hilly landscapes fringed by dense vegetation or in white architectural settings with balconies and niches with bottles. The series was possibly produced in Amber or Jaipur around the mid-eighteenth century. Several standardised ragamala sets are known to exist from the first half of the eighteenth century, with similar dimensions, text panels, compositions and iconographies, they are variously attributed to Malpura, Jaipur, Malwa or Bikaner.

Another illustration, Vibhasa Ragini, from the same set is in the National Museum, New Delhi (inv.no. 58.58/83; illus. K. Ebeling, Ragamala Painting, Basel, 1973, C40, p.105) and is attributed to Jaipur, circa 1725 (K. Ebeling, op. cit., no.56, p.22). L.Y. Leach attributed a Gunakali Ragini folio in the Cleveland Museum of Art, from the same series as our painting, to ‘probably Jaipur, circa 1750’ (inv. 54.261; L.Y. Leach, Indian Miniature Paintings and Drawings – The Cleveland Museum of Art, Indiana, 1986, ill. no. 63, p.173). Four folios from a closely related ragamala set, attributed to Amber or Jaipur, are published in V. Ducrot, Four Centuries of Rajput Painting, Milan, 2009, JAI 6-9, pp.159-163.

For two other ragamala illustrations from this series, see lots 19 and 20.