AN ILLUSTRATION TO A RAGAMALA SERIES: VASANT RAGINI

This folio and that of the preceding lot are from the same Ragamala series, painted in Murshidabad in around 1755. Unusually, the paintings both include the portrait of their patron, Siraj al-Dawla, assuming the role of the nayaka. He is described by Robert Skelton who discussed the series in an article entitled ‘Murshidabad Painting’, as the secret onlooker (Marg, Vol. X, 1956, pp.10-22). Skelton quotes Ghulam Husayn who praised the looks of the handsome Nawab, saying that he was ‘renowned all over Bengal for its regularity and sweetness’. Skelton praises this series for having gained for Murshidabad painting ‘a new freedom and freshness of vision…The slightly artificial formality of the earlier style has been swept away, colour takes on a fresh gaiety, and a new feeling for the vitality of living forms is achieved by greater relaxation of line and softer modelling’ (Skelton, op.cit., p.14).