Inscribed above 261 and on the verso with the Hindi text from the Rasikapriya XIII, v. 11
Provenance:
Françoise and Claude Bourelier Collection, Paris
Artcurial, Paris, November 4, 2014, no. 222
Chapter XIII of the Rasikapriya is concerned with the duties of the sakhi, or the heroine’s confidante, whose responsibilities are ‘to instruct, entreat, adorn, stoop and chide’ (Bahadur, K.P., trans., The Rasikapriya of Keshavadasa, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1972, p. 207). Here the sakhi is addressing Krishna, who is seated chewing pan in the woods between trees in which monkeys are gamboling and deer frolic. The verse on the verso of all these pages actually refers to the painting following, so this painting illustrates the previous verse, where the sakhi chides Krishna for sitting idle when he has already made Radha fall in love with him (ibid., pp. 210-211).
This large series of nearly 300 paintings is widely dispersed, and there are examples in most major collections. Thirty-seven of them are in the Konrad and Eva Seitz collection (Seitz, Konrad, Orchha, Datia, Panna, Malwa Miniaturen von den rajputischen Höfen Bundelkhands 1580-1850, Hanstein Verlag, Köln, 2015, nos. 5.1-37). The same composition has been used several times already in this series (there are three examples in the Seitz collection, nos. 5.17, 23, 25). It is a kind of leitmotiv in this series, where one person is addressing another out of doors. The somewhat static figures are enlivened by lovely details in the palace architecture, the exuberant trees, and the bounding deer and monkeys scattered throughout the pages. The series is normally thought of as from circa 1640, but Seitz suggests a much earlier date of circa 1615.
J.P. Losty