Important Notice

KOTA, CIRCA 1820
Gouache on paper heightened with gold
Image: 9.75 x 7.5 in (24.7 x 19 cm)
Folio: 10.5 x 8.25 in (26.6 x 20.9 cm)

NON-EXPORTABLE REGISTERED ANTIQUITY

PROVENANCE
The Tandan Collection


Shiva is the main figure in this celebratory painting. He is shown in soumya bhaav, with benign eyes. Across from him sits Parvati, whose attendants play music. Nandi, Shiva's vahana and the gatekeeper to Kailasa, is in the foreground to the left, while Ganesha is seen amidst the other gods in the background. Behind Shiva, a gazelle leaps gracefully in the background, reminiscent of those seen in hunting scenes popular in Kota in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. A palace is visible in the distance. The painting celebrates Shiva, the adiguru and his family, who represent music, dance, and knowledge.

"The spontaneity of the later seventeenth - and eighteenth - century Kota style eventually gave way, in the second half of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, to subtler, softer color (often isolated by large areas of white), more refined modelling, and a passion for lavish decorative effects." (Dye III, Arts of India, p. 274)

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