AN ILLUSTRATION TO A RASRAJ OF MATIRAM SERIES
PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE LONDON COLLECTION
Datia, Madhya Pradesh, Central India, 1770 - 80

Opaque pigments and gold on paper, the vertical composition illustrating a typical scene inspired from the Rasraj poem by Matiram with the heroine (nayika) lying on her bed pining over her beloved whilst two attendants attempt comforting her with food and drinks, Krishna meeting one of his beloved's sakhi (confidante) outside the palatial walls, two male attendants caught in conversation in a separate room to the left, with 5ll. of black ink Devanagari script against an ochre cartouche at the top, mounted, glazed and framed, 30cm x 20.5cm excluding the frame.

Provenance: Sotheby's London, 17 December 1969, lot 50.

The poet Matiram, with his work Rasraj, is considered together with Keshavadas and Bihari Lal one of the foundational and most prominent poets of ritikavya, a genre of court poetry which aims to celebrate erotic sentiments in a classical manner (Harsha V. Dehejia and Vijay Sharma, Painted Words: Kangra Paintings of Matiram's Rasraj, 2012, p. 112). The Rasraj is a masterpiece of ritikal poetry, written by Matiram for his own pleasure between 1633 - 43. In the poem, Matiram exhorts the sakhi (confidante) to fulfil four duties towards the nayika: to adorn, to teach, to complain with sarcasm and to make humour (ibidem, p. 73). In our composition, one can observe the sakhi attempting to fulfil two of her duties: firstly, she tries to cheer up the love-struck nayika; then, she meets with Krishna to give him a jewel belonging to the nayika and informing him of her devotion.

The Datia school appears to have been quite fond of this poem and several illustrations in this style are known to date. Six paintings from this Rasraj series are illustrated in Harsha V. Dehejia and Vijay Sharma, Painted Words: Kangra Paintings of Matiram's Rasraj, 2012, pp. 182 - 183. Other pages are held in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M.72.2.3); and lastly, two Datia pages from the collection of the scholar Ananda K. Coomaraswamy (1877 - 1947) were exhibited at Simon Ray's Gallery, St. James's, London in October 2017 (nos. 36 and 37).

Dimensions: 30cm x 20.5cm excluding the frame