Credit Line:Promised Gift of Steven Kossak, The Kronos Collections
Accession Number:L.2018.44.20
This lively painting depicts the phulgar, or Western Horned Pheasant (Tragopan Melanocephalus). It has black and gray speckled plumage, a crested and wattled head, and the color orange on its face and neck feathers. Painting at Mandi, a relatively large kingdom in the Punjab Hills, did not really get underway until the middle of the eighteenth century. It reached an apogee of creativity during the reign of Raja Isvari Sen (r. 1788l826), who was under the cultural sway of paintingmad Kangra and Guler, the two kingdoms which supplied a number of Isvari Sen’s favorite artists. His leading court painter was Sajnu, originally from Kangra or Guler, the artist of the present work. Sajnu (fl. 180620), like Nainsukh (cat. nos. 6970) and the Basohli Master of the Early Rasamanjari (cat. nos. 3738) before him, did much to transform the style of painting everywhere in the Punjab Hills. Early nineteenth century Pahari painting was greatly influenced by his elaborate, decorative borders; his geometric, mannered compositions; jagged rocks; and spatial complexity. After Sajnu (and his near contemporary, Phurku of Kangra), nothing would look quite the same again. Probably the artist’s major achievement was the creation of a set of twentyone illustrated folios comprising a HamirHath Series, dated to the same year as the present work. (1) This relatively simple and straightforward study from life captures Sajnu in an uncharacteristically relaxed moment. (2) The feeling of lively, suspended movement and the feathery texture and color articulation of the phulgar are exceptional. Sajnu probably made separate studies such as this one in order to incorporate supporting elements into his more complex figural compositions. 94. (1) W.G. Archer 1973, Vol. I, pp. 36061 (2) For __ other Pahari studies of birds, see Seyller and Mittal 2015 nos.________.
Inscription: Inscribed on the front in black ink written in devanagari script: “In a.d. 1810 [Samvat 1867], sastra samvat 86, on the eleventh day of jyestha, [this] phulgar was painted by Sajnu.”
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.