An illustration to a Rasikapriya series: Krishna expresses his desire for his beloved, by the artist Ustad Mahmud, India, Rajasthan, Bikaner, dated VS 185(?)2 / c.1795-96(?) AD

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Auction Closed

October 23, 01:24 PM GMT

Estimate

7,000 - 10,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

gouache heightened with gold and silver on paper, within a narrow gold border, white rules, wide red margins with 5 lines of black devanagari script in the upper margin, the reverse with old inventory numbers in pencil and crayon, a line of black devanagari including the name of the artist and the date in vikram samvat, rubbed stamp of the Bikaner royal collection below

painting: 19.5 by 12.9cm.

leaf: 27 by 19.4cm.

Ex-Bikaner royal collection

The present painting is based on the text of the Rasikapriya, an epic poem dealing with the themes of nayakas and nayikas, written in 1591 by the Sanskrit scholar Keshav Das. Das was court poet to Raja Madhukar Shah of Orchha in the Malwa region of central India. The sixteen chapters of the Rasikapriya describe the various aspects and emotions of love through the story of the divine lovers, Krishna and Radha. The inscription on the reverse includes the name of an artist Ustad Mahmud who would have belonged to the Usta professional caste of artists. The Usta (associated with Ustad or ‘master’) family is known to have worked at the royal court of Bikaner from the reign of Maharaja Rai Singh (1571-1612) to the nineteenth century (N. Krishna, ‘The Umarani Usta Master-Painters of Bikaner and their Genealogy’ in A. Topsfield (ed.), Court Painting in Rajasthan, Mumbai, 2000, p.57).