BIKANER, RAJASTHAN, INDIA, LATE 17TH CENTURY

This beautiful illustration belongs to a well-known Bhagavata Purana series produced in the Bikaner court in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The series is large in scale and stylistically emphasises the closeness between the Mughal court and that at Bikaner. The thorough detailing, miniature figures, pale green landscape, undulating hills and close attention to vegetation and wildlife all speak to classical Mughal ideals. Meanwhile, the beautifully patterned trees are reminiscent of the native Western Indian and Rajput painting traditions. The tall and slender figures, cinched at the waist, are characteristic of the Bikaner school.

This illustration is from a very large and now dispersed set that was once a part of the Bikaner Palace Collection. Work on this series is said to have begun during the reign of Maharaja Anup Singh (r. 1669-98) and completed during the reign of Maharaja Sujan Singh (r. 1700-36). While some scholars speculated production took place over two decades at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century, others have suggested it could have taken fifty or more years to finish. Undoubtedly, several master artists from the royal atelier at Bikaner have contributed to these paintings.

A small group of paintings, around fifteen, from the series dating from the late seventeenth century are most highly valued. The earlier paintings display a more meticulous precision and sophistication than the later paintings, as well as fine detailing, against the slightly more naive although elaborately ornamented later additions (H. Goetz, The Art and Architecture of Bikaner State, Oxford, 1950, p.112). A number of features of the present illustration suggest it might be part of this earlier corpus. The depiction of the trees, their finger-like roots visible beneath and teeming with wildlife, relate closely to those in the illustration of the Death of the Giant Shankachura dated 1680-90 in the Metropolitan Museum (acc. no. 1974.219). However it is to the illustration of Indra and Surabhi offering homage to Krishna dated to the last quarter of the 17th century and in the Goenka Collection that our illustration compares to even more closely (B.N. Goswamy, Painted Visions: The Goenka Collection of Indian Paintings, New Delhi, 1991, p.152, cat no.121). Both the Goenka illustration and the present lot share finely detailed foliage, similarly depicted cows, pairs of birds flying horizontally across the page and Krishnas wearing the same crown and costume.

Other pages from this series are now in important museum and private collections, including the San Diego Museum of Art (Edwin Binney 3rd Collection, acc. no.1990.785), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (acc.nos.1974.219 and 2005.361), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Paul F. Walter Collection, acc.no.M.86.345.2), the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution (acc.no.S2018.1.46), the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia (acc.no.1997.15), the Kronos Collection (see T. McInerney, S. Kossak and N. Haider, Divine Pleasures: Painting from India’s Rajput Courts: the Kronos Collections, New York, 2016, pp.100-1, cat.no.25), the Goenka Collection (see B.N. Goswamy, Painted Visions: The Goenka Collection of Indian Paintings, New Delhi, 1991, pp.151-4, cat nos.120-3), and the collection of the late William Ehrenfeld (see D. Ehnbom, Indian Miniatures: The Ehrenfeld Collection, New York, 185, pp.148-9, cat 68).

An illustration from the same series of Krishna fluting sold at Sotheby’s, London, 30 March 2022, lot 49 and a further folio from the collection of Paul G. Allen sold at Christie’s, New York, 10 November 2022, lot 195.