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Artwork Details
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Title:Krishna and the Gopas (Cow Herders) Enter the Forest
Artist:Possibly by Kota Master A
Date:ca. 1720
Medium:Opaque watercolor and gold on paper
Dimensions:Page: H. 12 5/8 in. (32.1 cm) W. 9 3/8 in. (23.8 cm) Painting: H. 10 1/2 in. (26.7 cm) W. 7 3/4 in. (19.7 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Promised Gift of the Kronos Collections, 2015
The young Krishna, the blueskinned, nimbused figure playing a flute at the center right, is entering a dense grove of trees teeming with paired peacocks and aquatic birds. He is accompanied by his playmates, the gopas (cow herders) wearing short trousers, and by youthful members of the royal court. The dense, lush foliation and rough paint texture are characteristic of Kota paintings of this date. Milo Cleveland Beach and Stuart Cary Welch are the leading experts on the history and character of court painting from the kingdom of Kota, a very important center of production. (1) Yet these two experts seriously disagree about the identity of Kota’s major artists and the stylistic development of the school. Welch would probably attribute the present painting of ca. 1720 (note the bump on Krishna’s forehead) to the artist he calls the Kota Master, whereas Beach might attribute the same picture to the artist he calls Painter C. The mediumsized former kingdom of Kota (about ll5 miles from north to south and about 110 miles at its greatest breadth) in the southeast of Rajasthan is for the most part covered with stunted trees and thick undergrowth (as seen in this painting). The territory also contains a number of extensive game preserves and several tracts of cultivated land. The former kingdom’s capital (also called Kota), with its impressive royal fort and palace on the banks of the Chambal River, is today a major center for the chemical and engineering industries. (1) For Beach’s major studies of Kota painting, see Milo Cleveland Beach, Rajput Painting at Bundi and Kota (Ascona: Artibus Asiae, 1974) and Milo C. Beach, “The Masters of the Chunar Ragamala and the Hada Master” and “Masters of Early Kota Painting” in Milo C. Beach, Eberhard Fischer, and B.N. Goswamy, eds., Masters of Indian Painting (Zurich: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 2011), Vol. I, pp. 291304 and Vol. II, pp. 45978. For Welch’s major studies of Kota painting, see Stuart Cary Welch et al, Gods, Kings and Tigers: The Art of Kotah (New 31. SK.027 DP336302.TIF and DP336389.TIF York: Asia Society Galleries, 1997); Stuart Cary Welch, A Flower from Every Meadow (New York: The Asia Society, 1973); Stuart Cary Welch, Indian Drawings and Painted Sketches (New York: The Asia Society, 1976); and Stuart Cary Welch and Kimberly Masteller, From Mind, Heart, and Hand: Persian, Turkish, and Indian Drawings from the Stuart Cary Welch Collection (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).
Inscription: Inscribed on the reverse in black ink written in Hindi in devanagari script: “Number 12, a painting: Thakurj [Krishna] playing hide-and-seek along with the cowherds in the Brindavan [forest]”
Ramesh Kapoor, 1997
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Divine Pleasures: Painting from India's Rajput Courts—The Kronos Collections," June 13–September 11, 2016.
The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world.
