A prince and his mistress in an erotic embrace on a palace terrace

Bikaner, circle of Ruknuddin, circa 1690-1700

Footnotes

Provenance
Private UK collection.

The painting appears to be closely related to a highly unusual series of forty works now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, attributed to the Bikaner court artist Ruknuddin and his studio, dated to 1687-98, and depicting Mughal and other rulers in erotic postures. Imma Rammos (op. cit., below) argues that the transgressive inclusion of Mughal figures is a nod to close Rajput-Mughal relations. Maharajah Anup Singh of Bikaner (reg. 1669-98) campaigned widely in the Mughal armed forces, was made a general, and eventually had the title Maharajah bestowed on him by Aurangzeb. Thus the series is an illustration of the interaction of Hindu and Muslim political and artistic cultures, the rulers depicted in a context associated with both the Kama Sutra, but more specifically the Ananga Ranga of Kallyana Malla, a celebrated erotic text. Its influence, Rammos observes, can be seen in the appearance of bottles, sprinklers and other utensils, used to heighten the eroticism of the setting - as seen in the finely-painted group of objects on the terrace floor in our painting. In particular we can note the unusual twin-branched candelabrum, which appears in at least two of the Fitzwilliam paintings. The Ananga Ranga also suggests the use of illustrations of sexual postures (such as these paintings) to 'gladden the glance'. Albums of such works, therefore, were designed for private consumption in aristocratic circles, in an atmosphere of connoisseurship.

Ruknuddin was a Muslim artist, probably trained in the Mughal workshops, and he, along with his assistants, were responsible for the strongly Mughal-influenced Bikaner style of this period, and he would have been the obvious choice to produce the Fitzwilliam series, with its political implications as well as its artistic ambitions, according to Rammos' thesis. The Bikaner palace archives record that in 1697 and the years following Ruknuddin produced another series based on the Baramasa ('lament over twelve months'), in which various Rajput rulers appeared as romantic heroes. The atmospheric backgrounds of such series - depicting monsoon weather, sunsets, moonlight - may have fed into works such as the present lot, with its view over palace rooftops and darkening sky, with crescent moon and stars in the upper right corner. The same starry sky and moon, as well as the finely delineated tree, appear in a ragamala scene by Ruknuddin, dated circa 1690-95, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1978.540.2), illustrated in S. Kossak, Indian Court Painting, 16th-19th Century, New York 1997, p. 65, no. 33.

See Imma Rammos, ' "Private Pleasures" of the Mughal Empire', available online at Art History, vol. 37, no. 3 (2014), pp. 409-427.