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Artwork Details
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Title:A Lady Dressing
Artist:Attributed to the Master of the Swirling Skies
Date:ca. 1720-50
Medium:Opaque watercolor, and silver on paper
Dimensions:H. 6 13/16 in. (17.3 cm) W. 5 1/2 in. (14 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Promised Gift of the Kronos Collections, 2015
After her bath a lady is standing on a low table or platform (takht) gazing in a small mirror held by her maid. The partially unclad lady will finish her toilet momentarily, but for the time being we are free to look at her. With her heavy chin and thick face, small breasts and ample thighs, the lady is a virtual pinup of early eighteenth century Jammu notions of feminine beauty. She is a very conventional beauty. As such, she would never conceive of removing her impressive display of filigree jewelry, as it highlighted her voluptuous form, of which she was very proud. The agitated sky, represented by black, grey and yellow swirls on a white ground, and the foreground grass, represented by undulating vegetative strips and small plants picked out in black, are stylistic characteristics of the important artist Steven Kossak has called Master of the Swirling Skies. (l) (See also cat. no. 54.) Kossak ascribes more than a dozen paintings to this artist, who seems to have been active at Jammu during the second quarter of the eighteenth century. To judge from the face and figure style this artist preferred, one can see that he was influenced by his possible relation, the Early Bahu Master (see cat. no. 45), who was active in the same region some forty years earlier. This painting is notable for its restricted palette, dominated by muddy green, black and silver (now tarnished) color combinations, and erotic subject matter. “Depictions of women at their toilet, often attended by a maid, are an important genre for this artist.” (2) (1) For discussion of the Master of the Swirling Skies see Steven Kossak 2014. (2) Ibid, pg. 16
Inscription: Inscribed on the reverse in black ink in Panjabi written in takri script: “the immature youth . . .”
Ex Collection: Douglas Barrett, sold by Spinks
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.
