AN ILLUSTRATION FROM THE MAHABHARATA SERIES: HARISHCHANDRA AND HIS MINISTER KILLING A TIGER
INDIA, DECCAN, MAHARASHTRA, CIRCA 1840
£10,710
Auction: Indian Paintings from the Collection of William & Mildred Archer | Lots 84 to 152 | 12 June at 10am
Description
gouache on paper
Dimensions
sight-size: 28.5cm x 43cm (11 ¼in x 16 7/8in)
Footnote
Note:
For several decades these types of illustrations to the Mahabharata, characterised by their monumental figures, primary colour palette and folkish style, were thought to have been executed in Paithan after the father-in-law of the collector Dinkar G. Kelkar (1869-1990) received as a payment eight hundred of the paintings from a client living in Paithan, a town in Maharashtra. However, further research shows that the paintings are from Pinguli, a small town, also in Maharashtra, further south on the coast of Goa. Pinguli is well known for its artists depicting scenes from the Mahabharata not only in paintings but in puppetry too.
For further examples in the British Museum, see A. L. Dallapiccola, South Indian Paintings – A Catalogue of the British Museum Collections, London, 2010, pp. 278-295.
For a very similar painting previously in the Doris Wiener Collection, see Christie’s, New York, The Collection of Paul F. Walter, 28 September 2017, lot 644; and for an identical scene in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, see accession no. 1987.424.12.