KANGRA SCHOOL, NORTH INDIA, CIRCA 1820

Both paintings show the excitement of the impending storm in the monsoon season. In the first the lovers go out onto the upper terrace to watch the clouds build, as the thunder snakes down out of the clouds and the distant city is already in the midst of the storm. The subject of the second, the lady on a swing, is frequently associated with the three-day festival of Teej during the month of Sravana, excitedly celebrating the impending monsoon rains. Other Pahari versions of the same scene, in increasingly countrified settings, are in the Victoria and Albert Museum (inv. no. IM.73-1912), in the Jagdish Mittal Collection (John Seyller, Pahari Paintings in the Jagdish and Kamla Mittal Museum of Indian Art, Hyderabad, 2014, no.104, pp.296-7) and in the Kronos Collection promised gift to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Terence McInerney, Steven M. Kossak and Navina Najat Haider, Divine Pleasures, Painting from India’s Rajpuit Courts, The Kronos Collection, exhibition catalogue, New York, 2016, no.73, pp.200-201).