Attributed to Sahib Ram, Jaipur, India, circa 1750-75

The present painting gives is an intimate glimpse at ladies inside the zenana. We may assume the two are of the zenana given their similar clothing, jewellery and henna and the hem of a sari on the left side of the image hints at a third figure, similar to a painting in the Rietberg Museum, Zurich (Rosa Cimino, Life at Court in Rajasthan: Indian miniatures from the seventeeth to the nineteenth century, Torino, 1985, no.52). The manner in which we observe the scene relates to the ‘window’ type portraits which became popular in Mughal painting following the arrival of European Renaissance prints at court in the 17th century. Also suggestive of Mughal painting convention is the fact that whilst the painting feels almost voyeuristic, the sense of modesty of both ladies is very much upheld by their rigid profile posture. However, in true Jaipur style the pair are offset by the rigid geometry of the composition and bright planes of colour and pattern.
This fine large-scale work is a product of Sahib Ram, whose long career from 1750 until 1820 saw him serve six different maharajas of Jaipur. Although unsigned, the style of the present lot is undoubtedly that of Ram and we can compare this piece with three life-sized and dated royal portraits on permanent display in the Kumar Sangram Singh Collection in Jaipur (Emma Aitken, in Beach, Goswamy and Fischer (eds.), Masters of Indian Painting, 2011, p.623). A further similarity can be drawn between our two ladies and a fragmentary painting of Maharaja Pratap Singh and his harem by Sahib Ram, now housed in the Freer Sackler Museum of Art (inv.S1997.70). However, our painting predates that work by some thirty years but should be considered an early example of large-scale Jaipur painting.