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Artwork Details
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Title:"Rama Commands Lakshmana to Take Sita Away," Illustrated folio from the “Shangri" Ramayana (The Adventures of Rama) (Style I)
Artist:Attributed to the Early Bahu Master
Date:ca. 1675–90
Medium:Opaque watercolor, silver and gold on paper
Dimensions:Page: H. 8 1/2 in. (21.6 cm) W. 11 7/8 in. (30.2 cm)
Painting: H. 6 3/8 in. (16.2 cm) W. 10 1/8 in. (25.7 cm)
Classification:Codices
Credit Line:Promised Gift of the Kronos Collections, 2015
Accession Number:SL.21.2016.1.36
This painting, as well as cat. nos. 46, 47, 48, 49. and 50, comes from one of the most famous, and puzzling, series of Indian paintings, the socalled “Shangri Ramayana.” (For discussion of the “Shangri Ramayana Series, see cat. no. 46.) John Seyller and Jagdish Mittal call the “Shangri Ramayana” one of the highpoints of painting in the Punjab Hills. (1) In this painting a gatekeeper, leaning on a staff in a niched entryway, guards access to Rama’s palace. which has been configured as a riotous assemblage of domes, pillars, finials, and rectangles, all brilliantly colored and patterned. Rama, the seventh incarnation of Vishnu, and his brother Lakshmana stand at the center of the composition. Lakshmana does not understand why Rama must honor their father’s promise to Kaikeyi, the father’s wife and the boys’ evil foster mother, when her demands for Rama’s banishment are so clearly unfair. Lakshmana places his hand on the hilt of his sword, ready to uphold his brother’s right to remain in Ayodhya, and to succeed to the throne. (2) The name of the great artist who painted this picture is unknown, although he has been dubbed the Early Bahu Master, or the First Bahu Master. (3) The majority of his works comprise the approximately 24 paintings by him from the present Series, as well as a portrait in Seattle and cat. no. 43. (4) Clearly influenced by the anonymous Basohli artist who has been dubbed Master of the Early Rasamanjari (see cat. nos. 37 and 38), this Jammu (Bahu) artist shares with his Basohli “cousin” a “like visual splendor” deriving from his use of mostly warm. intense colors, extravagantly patterned surfaces, and squat, lightly shaded figures with intense, staring eyes. (3) For discussion of the Early Bahu Master, or the First Bahu Master, see Steven Kossak in Milo C. Beach, Eberhard Fischer, and B.N. Goswamy, eds., . 20ll, Vol. II, pp. 491500. (4) For a list of the 24 paintings from the present Series by the Early Bahi Master, as well as his other work, see ibid, vol. II, pp. 49293. (1) John Seyller and Jagdish Mittal, Pahari Paintings in the Jagdish and Kamla Mittal Museum of Indian Art (Hyderabad: Jagdish and Kamla Museum of Indian Art, 2014), pg. 29. (2) I am indebted to Alka Bagri for the identification of this scene.
Spink and Sons 1980s. Ex collections Howard Hodgkin and Svetoslav Roerich.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Divine Pleasures: Painting from India's Rajput Courts—The Kronos Collections," June 13–September 11, 2016.
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