Girl holding a Wine Cup and Bottle standing under a Tree, North Deccan, possibly Maratha,...

Girl holding a Wine Cup and Bottle standing under a Tree, North Deccan, possibly Maratha, India, early 18th century, opaque pigments heightened with silver and gold on paper, 18.5 x 12.5cm.

A young girl standing under a flowering tree is one of the most common subjects in 18th century Deccani painting, as can be seen in Mark Zebrowski's survey of Deccani painting, chapter 12. Our girl stands holding a silver bottle and a cup under a tree with purple blossoms and somewhat unusually for the period her hair is arranged in a long plait hanging down her back. Her orhni or rather sari is rather unusually arranged to cover just the back of her head and then fall down in a graceful curve as it is caught up into her waistband, and fans out in front of her, although here the painter has given it a different colour perhaps mistaking his drawing model for a patka.

A painting formerly in the Khajanchi collection in Bikaner (Khandalavala et al.1960, fig.116) has women wearing a sari similarly arranged with a graceful loop at the back and caught up through the waistband, that the cataloguers assign possibly to Shorapur early 18th century. The style of sari is derived from those worn in early paintings from the northern Deccan (eg Zebrowski 1983, figs.24-31: Goswamy and Bhatia 1999, nos 66-68). The shape of our girl's head, the plait and the sari caught up at the back of her head are all found in a painting of a group of women worshipping at a shrine that Zebrowski classes as Maratha from the second half of the 18th century (1983, fig.235), although in that painting the women are wearing the 9-yard Maratha sari that is worn caught up between the legs. The facial type of our girl can be traced back to late 17th century artists from Golconda such as Rahim Deccani and his school (op cit, figs. 175-177).