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Lot 542
AN ILLUSTRATTION TO A RAGAMALA SERIES: TODI RAGINI
AMBER, CIRCA 1700
Indian, Himalayan & Southeast Asian Art
21 March 2023, 18:00 EDT
New York

US$4,000 - US$6,000

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AN ILLUSTRATTION TO A RAGAMALA SERIES: TODI RAGINI

AMBER, CIRCA 1700
Opaque watercolor and gold on paper; verso numbered in Devanagari, '5'.
Image: 9 1/4 x 6 7/8 in. (23.5 x 17.5 cm);
Folio: 10 1/2 x 7 7/8 in. (26.7 x 20 cm)

Footnotes

Against a yellow field bordered by pink and purple surrealist rocks, the pale doe and maiden respond to an unknown distraction beyond the painting's left margin. Yet, the black stag and closest doe remain transfixed on the lady, whose song and rudra veena, with its multicolored lotus-form gourds, has drawn them and the solitary dove near.

This painting is from a ragamala series distinguished by its bold red horizon band and painterly sky, of which three have been previously sold at Christie's, London, 16 October 1980, lot 170; New York, 20 March 2012, lot 284; and Thierry de Maigret, Paris, 30 September 2022, lot 93. Two paintings from an earlier series from Amber, c. 1680, in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (IS.64-1952 & IS.75-1952), employ the same techniques of setting the trees against black and layered rocks.

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.

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