AN ILLUSTRATION TO A BHAGAVATA PURANA SERIES: AKRURA TRAVELS TO HASTINAPURA TO MEET KUNTI, BIKANER, INDIA, CIRCA 1690-1710

Acquired in the 1980s

This folio from a well-known Bhagavata Purana series depicts Akrura visiting Hastinapura at Krishna’s behest to meet Kunti and inquire about the state of affairs at the Kuru court. On the left, Krishna seated with Balarama and Uddhava, gives instructions to Akrura in a white marble walled palace - a chariot waiting outside. Distance and time are mapped using the river as a diagonal device cutting across the center of the painting.

Across the river, at the right, Kunti, mother of the Pandavas receives Akrura in an audience hall of the palace at Hastinapura. Akrura is then seen conversing with King Dhritarashtra on an upper story. The palaces are painted a brilliant white, set against a green verdigris landscape with two large trees rising to a hill-crest lined with smaller trees - a large white fortress in the distance. The sky glows a striking yellow brushed with streaks of vermilion. A golden sun shines above.

This superbly executed painting from Bikaner is from a large, dispersed Bhagavata Purana series, likely begun during the reign of Maharaja Anup Singh (r.1669-98). Given the scope of the series and large number of folios extant we can conclude that the series was painted over an approximately ten to twenty-year period and involved the hands of numerous artists in the royal Bikaner painting workshops. 

Other illustrations from the series are in public and private collections worldwide. See D. Ehnbom, Indian Miniatures: The Ehrenfeld Collection, New York, 1985, pps. 148-49, cat 68, and S.C. Welch and M.C. Beach, Gods, Thrones and Peacocks, New York, 1965, p. 75, and p. 120, no. 29.

Folios from the series were offered at Sotheby's New York on March 25, 1987, lot 143, and on March 22, 2002, lot 19, from the Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck Collection.