The Heroine Annoyed with her Faithless Lover, a folio from a Rakisapriya Series, Kangra, circa 1830-50, after a painting from the Kangra Rakisapriya series of 1820-30, opaque pigments heightened with gold, in an oval cartouche framed with decorated...

The Heroine Annoyed with her Faithless Lover, a folio from a Rakisapriya Series, Kangra, circa 1830-50, after a painting from the Kangra Rakisapriya series of 1820-30, opaque pigments heightened with gold, in an oval cartouche framed with decorated blue spandrels on a pink album page, inscribed in Hindi on the verso with the relevant verses from the Rasikapriya of Keshav Das beginning: Atha ganika khandita, painting 21.9 x 15.1cm.; folio 24.6 x 17.3cm Provenance: Private American Collection Another illustration from the earlier series was sold at Christie's New York, 21 March 2018, Lot 340. The nayika dressed all in white is seated in front of cushions on a rug on the floor of her carpeted terrace and the nayaka dressed in a flowing lilac gown and lilac turban has come to her. Doorways in the arched wall behind her lead into the darkness of her inner chambers. The khandita heroine is she who berates her lover with many words when having promised to come to her house in the evening he in fact turns up in the morning having spent the night elsewhere. Her raised hand expresses perhaps her interrogation of her lover, but he does not seem to be very contrite. The painting is within an oval frame with decorated spandrels and is based on a model from the Kangra Rasika priya series of 1820-25 of which 16 paintings are in the V & A. Archer describes the series (Archer 1973, Kangra 66) as having originally several hundred paintings, now dispersed; with very few published, but see Randhawa 1962, pl. III. Archer dated this series 1820-25, but subsequent scholarship put it a little earlier around 1810. Goswamy and Fischer, however, have now returned it to its original date and attribute it to Purkhu of Kangra and his studio (2011, pp. 721, 732). While most of the nayakas of that series show Krishna in his traditional garb, our painting shows the nayaka as a prince who seems to be based on the portraits of the youthful Raja Sansar Chand of Kangra from around 1780 (Archer 1973, Kangra nos. 9-14). Apart from its later style, our painting is also in a smaller format and the text on the verso is written in a different hand to the Purkhu series. .