AN ILLUSTRATION TO A RAGAMALA SERIES: THE SUHAVI RAGINI
PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE ARIZONA COLLECTOR
Basohli School, Pahari Hills, Northern India, ca. 1680 - 1700

Opaque pigments and ink heightened with gold on paper, the composition depicting an Indian maiden wearing a white-dotted bright red saree, her forehead marked with the Shaiva tripundra (three horizontal white lines and a red dot in the middle), standing between two tigers in the wilderness, petting them like two docile kittens, flanked by verdant and blossoming trees, set within black rules and bright red borders, at the top a black ink inscription in Takri script identifying the illustration, mounted, glazed and framed, the illustration 19cm x 20cm, 32.5cm x 33.5cm including the frame.

Based on K. Ebeling's reconstruction, the Suhavi Ragini is the third wife of the Megha Raga, a Hindustani musical mode usually played during the Monsoon season (K. Ebeling, Ragamala Painting, 1973, pp. 68 - 71). In the last quarter of the 17th century, Suhavi Ragini's illustrations seem to have been quite popular in the Pahari schools of Basohli and Nurpur, which produced some exquisite examples currently in the Fondation Custodia, Paris; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; and the Freer Gallery, Washington DC (F. Galloway, Pahari Paintings from the Eva and Konrad Seitz Collection, 2017, pp. 35 - 36). For comparable examples of the same subject, please see F. Galloway, Asian Art New York 2017, exhibition catalogue, p. 35; and Sotheby's London, The Sven Gahlin Collection, 6 October 2015, lot 88.