Gujari ragini: Page from a Ragamala series

CultureRajasthani

Date1670-1700

MediumOpaque pigments and gold on paper

DimensionsImage: 6 1/8 × 4 5/16 inches (15.5 × 11 cm)
Sheet: 8 15/16 × 6 7/8 inches (22.75 × 17.5 cm)
Mat: 20 × 16 inches (50.8 × 40.64 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: the Asian Art Acquisition Fund in memory of Laurence Sickman

Object number2019.17

On View

Not on view

Collections

South and Southeast Asian Art

Terms

DescriptionThis small, vertically oriented composition depicts a woman in courtly dress seated alone in a landscape playing a stringed instrument known as a veena. The bejeweled woman wears a golden yellow skirt with red trim and a translucent red headscarf, the fine garments worn by court women. She points up towards the leaves of the lush tree to the right of the composition. In the foreground, a stream rushes along a rocky bank at ther feet. A large body of water divides the foreground from a distant background of rolling hills and a white building to the upper left of the composition. Tiny boats and figures are lightly sketched in brown ink or paint, suggesting a deep recession in space, due to their scale. The billowing clouds above are painted in transparent washes. This painting is most likely a depiction of Gujari Ragini, one of the subjects of the Ragamala. The painting is rendered in opaque and transparent water colors with gold paint on paper. There is a faint crease running diagonally across the painting, likely from an old remounting of the painting. There is a small hole in the upper left of the paper.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Miniatures Indiennes, Musee d’ethnographie, Neuchâtel, Switzerland, June 29–December 31, 1980, no. 9.

Provenance

With Hagop Kevorkian (1872-1962), New York, by 1962;

Hagop Kevorkian Foundation, New York, 1962-1967;

With Soustiel, Paris, by 1968;

Private collection, Switzerland, 1968-2018;

With Francesca Galloway, London, by 2018;

Purchased from Francesca Galloway by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, May 2019.

Published References

Catalogue of Highly Important Oriental Manuscripts: The Property of the Kevorkian Foundation (London: Sotheby and Co., 1967), 58.

Musée d’ethnographie, Miniatures Indiennes: Exposition 29 juin to au 31 décembre 1980, exh. cat. (Neuchâtel: Musée d’ethnographie, 1980).

Francesca Galloway, Indian Paintings, spring online edition (https://www.francescagalloway.com/usr/documents/exhibitions/list_of_works_url/39/spring-online-catalogue-2019.pdf) (London, 2019), no. 21, (repro.).

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