Dora Tan
Specialist
Lot 535
AN ILLUSTRATION FROM A SAT SAI SERIES:
RADHA'S DESIRE FOR KRISHNA AWAKENS
RADHA'S DESIRE FOR KRISHNA AWAKENS
MEWAR, 1719
21 March 2023, 18:00 EDT
New YorkUS$4,000 - US$6,000
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AN ILLUSTRATION FROM A SAT SAI SERIES:
RADHA'S DESIRE FOR KRISHNA AWAKENS
RADHA'S DESIRE FOR KRISHNA AWAKENS
MEWAR, 1719
Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; inscribed above in Devanagari with a poetic couplet from Bihari Lal's Sat Sai and numbered '12' (also numbered '12' verso); "The crescent in his crown of peacock feathers gives Krishna, Nanda's son, rare regal splendour. As if envious of Siva's one moon, [Krishna] has adorned his head with hundreds of such moons.' (trans. S.K. Kapur, 2011, v.3).
Image: 8 1/2 x 7 in. (21.6 x 17.8 cm);
Folio: 9 3/4 x 8 1/4 in. (24.8 x 21 cm)
Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; inscribed above in Devanagari with a poetic couplet from Bihari Lal's Sat Sai and numbered '12' (also numbered '12' verso); "The crescent in his crown of peacock feathers gives Krishna, Nanda's son, rare regal splendour. As if envious of Siva's one moon, [Krishna] has adorned his head with hundreds of such moons.' (trans. S.K. Kapur, 2011, v.3).
Image: 8 1/2 x 7 in. (21.6 x 17.8 cm);
Folio: 9 3/4 x 8 1/4 in. (24.8 x 21 cm)
Footnotes
There many recensions of Bihari Lal's 700 hundred verses, but according to the best known (Grierson, 1896), this painting corresponds to verse 3, illustrating the moment when Radha's desire to see Krishna is first awakened after her confidant describes him sporting his peacock crown, which, for all the hundreds of crescents seen throughout its feathers, makes him as many times more splendid to behold than Shiva who has only one crescent moon in his hair.
Belonging to very first illustrated version of Bihari Lal's poem (dated 1719 by colophon) this painting might also be considered the work of the recently identified Master of the Jagged Water's Edge (cf. Glynn, "A Note on the Master of the Jagged Water's Edge", in A Splendid Land, edited by Diamond & Khera, 2022 pp. 362-3). Half the series remains in the Sarasvati Bhavan Library in Udaipur, while the rest is widely dispersed. Two other folios from this series were sold at Bonhams, New York, 14 September 2015, lot 107.
Provenance:
Moti Chandra, Mumbai
Pramod Chandra, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1964-2014
American Private Collection
Dr. Moti Chandra, the eminent art historian, author, numismatist, and Indologist, was Director of the Prince of Wales Museum of Western India (Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya) for over thirty years. His son, Dr. Pramod Chandra, was Harvard University's George P. Bickford Professor of Indian and South Asian Art for twenty-four years and was described in a tribute in the Harvard Gazette as an "exemplar of the most exacting standards in the scholarship of Indian art history." As well as a beloved professor, Pramod Chandra was a celebrated author and curator, including guest curator of the renowned 1985 exhibition "The Sculpture of India" at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The contributions of both father and son to the appreciation and understanding of Indian art cannot be overstated.