A GIRL IN A MEADOW Bikaner, Rajasthan, North Western India, 18th century, signed by Ghulam Muhammad Opaque pigments heightened with gold on paper, the vertical composition portraying a courtly lady standing in a meadow, her light green orhni and pastel green and white ankle-length jama male costume reflecting the hues of the surroundings, wearing a golden turban embellished with a black heron feather, holding a budding rose and a jasmine garland on one hand and a fly whisk on the other, mounted on later salmon-pink paper borders, the verso inscribed in Rajasthani along with an effaced Bikaner palace collection stamp, mounted on a white cardboard frame, the folio 24cm x 17.5cm. Inscription: nijar Dasara hai ri sam 1778 Ustai Kasa ri beto Ghulamahamada ro (this is an offering [nazar] for Dasera in Samvat 1778 [1721] from Ghulam Muhammad son of Ustad Qasam) The artists of the Bikaner atelier regularly presented paintings as nazars (ceremonial gifts) to their Maharajas on the occasion of important festivals, such as the great autumn festival of Dasera. Often, on such occasions, they would inscribe the versos with crucial dates and key documentation regarding themselves and their lineage, as the artist Ghulam Muhammad did on this painting. He was the son of Qasam, who was the son of Qayam, the direct progeny of Ruknuddin, one of the greatest late 17th-century Bikaner painters (Andrew Topsfield, Court Painting in Rajasthan, Mumbai, 2000, p. 62).