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Artwork Details
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Title:"Madhava Ragaputra: A Nobleman Dancing to the Music of Two Ladies" Folio from a Ragamala (Garland of Melodies)
Date:ca. 1680–1690
Medium:Opaque watercolor on paper
Dimensions:Page: H. 10 1/4 in. (26 cm) W. 7 5/8 in. (19.4 cm) Painting: H. 8 1/8 in. (20.6 cm) W. 5 1/2 in. (14 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Promised Gift of the Kronos Collections, 2015
An elegant nobleman, wearing a Mughalstyle costume, scarf, and turban, dances at the center of this picture. He is dancing to the music provided by two women, also wearing Mughal- style costumes, and playing a stringed instrument (a sarod?) and a drum. The three figures perform beside a seventeenth centurystyle, Pahari “lollipop” tree, on a grassy knoll beneath a narrow strip of blue and white sky. The background color is dark green, the same background color used in all ragamala paintings from the Raga Bhairava family. (1) This handsome painting is probably from the same dispersed ragamala series as the three Kahlur ragamala paintings of approximately the same date and style now in the San Diego Museum of Art, formerly in the collection of Edwin Binney 3rd. (2) The borders are the same, although the dimensions differ somewhat. Although the present painting is not labelled on the front or back, Martin Lerner has identified the subject as Madhava Ragaputra, a member of the Raga Bhairava family. Another candidate is Brahmarananda Ragaputra, although Lerner deems this identification less likely. (3) Just as raginis are considered the wives of masculine ragas, so ragaputras are considered the sons of ragas. For additional information about the ancient, yet difficult ragamala classification of Indian classical music and painting, see cat. no. 7. The series to which this painting once belonged was made in the kingdom of Kahlur, often called Bilaspur for its capital city of the same name, which was founded only in the year 1654. From that time until about 1780, Kahlur flourished. With a surfeit of excess money, the ruling princes must have patronized imported musicians, singers, and dancing girls. This spate of expensive, musical patronage would help to explain the large number of ragamala series that were produced in Kahlur during those same years. (4) (1) Waldschmidt and Waldschmidt 1967, pg. 149 (2) Archer 1973, Vol. I, nos. 8i8iii. For four other paintings from the same series, see Alice N. Heeramaneck, Masterpieces of Indian Painting (Verona: A. Mondadore Editore, 1984), pg. 97. (3) Lerner 1984, pg. 164 (4) Archer 1973, Vol. I, pg. 226
Inscription: Inscribed on the reverse with two lines in Panjabi written in takri script: “Raga Madhava / 23” as well as the number “23” written above; notated with two stamps with European figures in black ink
Ex Collection: Douglas Barrett; Spink, 1980?
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.
