This drawing is thought to have been a preparatory study for a mural. Although it first served as a pounce— its lines were pricked with tiny holes to allow the image to be transferred to a wall—it was later reworked into a finished drawing by Sahib Ram, who strengthened its outlines, whited out areas he wished to change, and brushed Krishna’s skin and clothing with luminous washes of watercolor. The drawing is based on an earlier work by the artist Sahib Ram that shows a dancing girl dressed as Krishna.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Head of Krishna: cartoon for a mural of the Raslila
Artist:Attributed to Sahib Ram (active 1778–1803)
Date:ca. 1800
Culture:India (Rajasthan, Jaipur)
Medium:Ink and opaque watercolor on paper
Dimensions:27 1/4 × 18 1/2 in. (69.2 × 47 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1918
Object Number:18.85.2
[ Ananda K. Coomaraswamy , Boston, until 1927; sold to MMA]
New York. China House. "Indian Paintings, Eleventh to Twentieth Century," May 3, 1956–May 25, 1956.
New York. Asia House Gallery. "Rajput Painting," November 29, 1960–January 30, 1961.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Selections for the Opening of The Florence and Herbert Irving Galleries," 1994.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Indian Court Painting: 16th–19th Century," March 25–July 6, 1997.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Indian Court Painting," 2000.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Mughal Influence in Rajasthani Painting," 2001.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Drawings from the Courts of North India: Sixteenth to Nineteenth Century," 2002.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Krishna: Mythology and Worship," February 9–May 9, 2004.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Painting in Rajasthan, 1650–1850," February 15–July 3, 2005.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Painting in Rajasthan," 2007.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Krishna: Mythology and Worship," March 1–July 28, 2008.
Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. Indian Drawings:. 2d series. [London]: [Printed for the India Society at the Essex House Press ], [1910], p. 22, pl. II.
Translated by Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. Rajput Painting: Being an account of the Hindu paintings of Rajasthan and the Punjab Himalayas of the 16th–19th centuries... Translated by Coomaraswamy, Ananda K.. Vol. 2 vols., New York: H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1916, pl. 9.
Gazette des Beaux Arts 60 (1918). p. 108.
Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. History of Indian and Indonesian Art. London: E. Goldston, 1927.
Dimand, M. S. A Handbook of Mohammedan Decorative Arts. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1930, pp. 64–65.
Rowland, Benjamin. The Art and Architecture of India: Buddhist, Hindu, Jain. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1953.
Dimand, M. S. A Handbook of Mohammedan Decorative Arts. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1958, pp. 65–66.
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy. The Arts and Crafts of India and Ceylon. New York: Farrar, Straus & Co., 1964.
Behrendt, Kurt. "Collecting Rajput, Pahari and Himalayan Painting at the Met." Orientations 46, no. 2 (March 2015). pp. 164–69, fig. 1.
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