Dora Tan
Specialist
Lot 531
A MAIDEN ADJUSTING HER VEIL
BIKANER, CIRCA 1720
21 March 2023, 18:00 EDT
New YorkUS$8,000 - US$12,000
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A MAIDEN ADJUSTING HER VEIL
BIKANER, CIRCA 1720
Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; mounted on an album page; verso with nastaliq calligraphy.
Image: 6 3/4 x 4 in. (17.2 x 10.2 cm);
Folio: 18 3/8 x 12 1/4 in. (46.7 x 31.1 cm)
Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; mounted on an album page; verso with nastaliq calligraphy.
Image: 6 3/4 x 4 in. (17.2 x 10.2 cm);
Folio: 18 3/8 x 12 1/4 in. (46.7 x 31.1 cm)
Footnotes
This alluring, lightly-clad maiden is exquisitely painted: the artist has even gone so far with minute brushstrokes as to hint at her long eyelashes and right brow beyond her profile. With slightly-flexed, hennaed toes, she walks among wildflowers under a rose-tinted dawn.
Such portraits of idealized women rendered with the refined techniques of the Mughal tradition followed in the wake of Emperor Aurangzeb's (r. 1658-1707) dwindling patronage of court miniaturists. Skilled artists found new patrons among Rajput courts and a broader merchant class interested in more general, timeless themes in Indian material culture. For a related composition of a woman bathing, though later with a much harder outline (attributed Bikaner, late 18th century), see Daljeet, Rajasthani Miniatures, New Delhi, 2018, p. 36, pl. 4. Other, more contemporaneous, comparisons include a drawing formerly of the Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Collection sold at Bonhams, 19 March 2012, lot 1200 and a painting in the Chazen Museum of Art, Madison (Vajracharya, Watson Collection of Indian Miniatures, 2003, no. 79).
Provenance:
Sotheby's, London, 22 April 1980, lot 23
Private Virginia Collection