THREE ILLUSTRATIONS TO RAGAMALA SERIES
Jaipur, Rajasthan, North-Western India, 19th century

Opaque pigments heightened with gold on paper, comprising three vertical compositions, each of similar size and illustrating various scenes from Ragamala series, including the Ramkali Ragini from the Hindola Raga, depicting the nayika holding an encrusted golden turban ornament in the shape of a feather, caught in conversation with a standing female attendant whilst comfortably seated in a courtly marble pavilion with floral pietra-dura inlays, 34cm x 24.5cm including the floral album borders; the Sindhuri Ragini, also part of the Hindola Raga, the composition depicting the nayika holding a trident, being served and assisted by two female maidens in a lavish palatial terrace, the scene departing here from the usual canon for this Ragini, traditionally portrayed as a nayika seated beside a body of water in which her two attendants swim naked, 33.8cm x 24.4cm including the floral album borders; and a Ragini (Deshi Ragini ?) from the Dipak Raga, a musical mode associated with night time, meaning to evoke intimacy between lovers, depicting the nayika and her beloved lying in bed in a tender embrace, assisted by three maidens whilst admiring the night sky above them, 33.8cm x 24.4cm including the floral album borders; each illustration with a cusped cartouche with three lines of black and red ink Devanagari text on ochre ground at the top, describing the musical mode and the scene, each illustration starting with the incipit 'Thus, the essential, true form of...', framed within concentric floral borders in the style of album pages, to the bottom of each illustration an indication of time, the recto of each illustration plain with an inventory number 85(?), 89 and 96.

Inscriptions indicating time:

Prātkāl (morning)

Pahr Tīsarī (the third quarter)

Sarveda (forever)

The three illustrations in this lot appear to be sharing a number of features with three paintings from similar Jaipur 19th-century Ragamala series (more specifically, Desakh, Bangali and Asavari Raginis) in the collection of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Centre, bequeathed by Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm Pitt (Juliet Thompson, class of 1922) to the Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY, exhibited from 24 January - 23 April 2017, in the exhibition "India in Miniature: Works from the Permanent Collection". Indeed, both our and their series feature the same Jaipuri pictorial style; provincial and naive floral album borders on thick cardboard; and unusual pictorial interpretations and solutions, often departing from the canonical rendering of Ragamala scenes.