AN ILLUSTRATION FROM A RAGAMALA SERIES: TODI RAGINI
INDIA, RAJASTHAN, PROBABLY AMBER, CIRCA 1750
Estimate: £3,000 - £5,000
Auction: 11 June 2025 from 10:00 BST
Description
gouache on paper heightened in gold, blue striped border, a richly detailed image depicting an exotic forest landscape with bountiful flora and fauna and monkeys, in the foreground near the water's edge, the main female figure is seated on a pink lotus throne holding a vina in her left hand and holding her right hand over a tame gazelle, flanked by a further gazelle and a female musician playing a tambour kneeling to the left, monkeys running through trees and along a palace roof in the background against a yellow sky, lotus flowers alongside a brook in the foreground, a blank yellow panel above the painting probably intended for text
Dimensions
26.3cm x 19.7cm
Provenance
Formerly, private French collection.
Footnote
For an illustration from the same series, entitled Gaudi Ragini, in the Cleveland Museum of Art, see L. Y. Leach, Indian Miniature Paintings and Drawings, Ohio, 1986, Fig. 61 and for an almost identical painting sold at Bonhams, see, Indian, Himalayan & Southeast Asian Art, 18 September 2013, lot 132. These two pages and ours share the same blue-striped borders and green luscious landscape with monkeys.
Three pages from this series are in the San Diego Museum of Art (nos. 1990.8.851, 855, 856). Another page is in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M.71.1.42), see Rosenfield, The Arts of India and Nepal, Boston, 1966, p. 173.