An illustration to a Ragamala series, Chandra Ragaputra, son of Hindola by a Pahari...

An illustration to a Ragamala series, Chandra Ragaputra, son of Hindola by a Pahari artist, Chamba or Bilaspur, Punjab Hills, North India, early 18th century, opaque watercolour and gold on paper, with a vivid red border, painting 18.9 x 12 cm., with red border 21.6 x 14.8cm.

Provenance

Private Collection, Germany

Inscribed on reverse in takri characters: raga candra // hindole 3 and raga candra and in nagari: raga candra hindole da putra (Candra raga [third] son of Hindola) as well as numbers 68 and 2484 within a cartouche, the last being the Mandi royal inventory number.

Candra, the moon god, crowned and holding two lotuses, is seated within his radiant orb on a chariot being drawn by two deer, with a charioteer crouched on the shaft with a whip. The ground beneath the chariot is carefully depicted composed of green ridges, their crests marked by darker streaks of green, on which grow clumps of red and white flowers with spiky green leaves. The Pahari artists of ragamalas followed Mesakarnas system which has six main ragas normally each with five wives or raginis and eight sons or ragaputras. The iconography of each painting is meant to embody both the descriptions of the raga as well as the sound with which it can be compared (Ebeling 1973, p. 64). In fact the artists often went their own ways, for Mesakarnas Candra son of Hindola is meant to have the iconography of a man dressed in lotus leaves and evoke the sound of a muskrat (ibid., p. 74).

This painting is f.68 from a dispersed album that was once in the Mandi royal collection. Pages from the album are now scattered in various public and private collections. Cathy Glynn has traced the albums presence from its inscriptions in the Kangra royal library of the Maharani Odaroli, but some time afterwards it was moved to Mandi where it was rebound in 1841 (Glynn, Skelton and Dallapiccola 2011, pp. 34-36). Most of the paintings are of typical Hindu/Rajput subjects such as Ragas, Raginis and Ragaputras belonging to the Pahari system of musical modes, as well as avatars of Vishnu and other deities. Though clearly the product of a single studio in the Punjab Hills, they are nonetheless probably the work of artists trained in more than one tradition. The style of painting dates from the beginning of the eighteenth century. Normally the page is divided into three major areas: a narrow strip at the bottom for the ground, a strip of white and blue with tangled clouds at the top, and a larger central area which the tall and vigorous figures almost fill against a solid ground. The most surprising element in these paintings is the influence of Deccani painting, evident in the striking but cool palette of lilac, mauve and turquoise, compositional ingenuity and strong element of fantasy (see Seyller 2011). While still displaying the vigorous line associated with early Pahari painting, the artists are also aware of Mughal or perhaps Deccani practices in their approach to shading and volume and the rendition of textiles.

Glynn believes the album was actually prepared in Chamba 1690-1700 on account of a similarity in the hanging fold of the turban over the neck found occasionally in Chamba as in a wood carving of c. 1650 (Glynn op. cit., pp. 34-35). However, there are close resemblances in the iconography of this series with later ragamala paintings from Bilaspur, where earlier publications placed the album. Bilaspur was one of the few Pahari states to produce vertical Ragamalas at this date, so the precise provenance remains for the moment open.

Literature

Archer, W.G., Indian Paintings from the Punjab Hills, Sotheby Parke Bernet, London, 1973

Ebeling, K., Ragamala Painting, Ravi Kumar, Basel, 1973

Glynn, C., Skelton, R., and Dallapiccola, A., Ragamala Paintings from India from the Claudio Moscatelli Collection, Philip Wilson, London, 2011

Goswamy, B.N., and Fischer, E., Pahari Masters: Court Painters of Northern India, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1992

Seyller, J., Deccani Elements in Early Pahari Painting in Haidar, N., and Sardar, M., eds., Sultans of the South: Arts of Indias Deccan Courts, 1323-1687, Metropolitan Museum, New York, 2011, pp. 64-81