Inscribed on the verso in Devanagari ... Madhumadhavi and in Nasta’liq ragini madhu ... [parts hidden by tape]
Provenance:
Alec Simpson Collection, New Jersey
Bonhams, New York, September 11, 2012, no. 77
In the iconography of Madhumadhavi ragini there is always a storm with lightning flashing. Sometimes the nayika rushes for shelter, at other times she feels sorry for the peacocks in the trees and offers them food. Here she and her companion hug each other and seem rather thrilled than otherwise to be out on the terrace while a storm is brewing above them. Lightning flashes across the sky and from behind an enormous black cloud. A bed is prepared on the terrace. The nayika’s dramatic gesture indicating the storm perhaps suggests that her lover will not now come, and she hugs her companion for reassurance.
The painting is set in a deep-red album page sprinkled with clumps of gold flowers, the whole evincing an extraordinarily-vivid color scheme. Although not as vividly colored as some others in this set, the contrast between the brilliant colors on the terrace and in the three-story house beyond and the dark sky lit by flashes of light adds to the drama of the scene. Silver is used extensively in this series—for the water, for the textile hangings, and for the clothes. There are also some very sensitive details, as can be seen in the delicately-painted friezes of niches containing pots.
Another painting from this set of Shri Raga was in the Seitz collection (Seyller, J., and Seitz, K., Mughal and Deccani Paintings, Museum Rietberg exhibition catalogue, Zurich, 2010, no. 46), which shows a similar tiered arrangement of a building stacked in diminishing tiers with a terrace in front. Five more pages are in the Museum Rietberg, Zurich, while another page is published in Masselos, J., Menzies, J., and Pal, P., Dancing to the Flute: Music and Dance in Indian Art, The Art Gallery of New South Wales exhibition catalogue, Sydney, 1997, no. 199. A somewhat similar set from the Deccan in the early 18th century is in the Kankroli collection (Ebeling, K., Ragamala Painting, Ravi Kumar, Basel, 1973, no. 81, pp. 199-202). The precise place of origin of this and similar sets is not yet settled, but it seems likely that it would have been Aurangabad, which was the capital of the province in the first half of the 18th century and where the first Nizam established his capital before moving to Hyderabad.
J.P. Losty