Folio from a Book of Dreams: The Boar
Rajasthan, Udaipur, circa 1720
Opaque pigments on paper
Folio: 10 x 8 ½ in. (25.5 x 21.6 cm.)
Provenance:
Christie’s London, 12th June 2018, lot 28 Christie’s Amsterdam, 12 October 1993, lot 34.
Exhibited:
Indian Miniature Paintings c.1590–c.1850, Amsterdam, 1 October–30 November 1987, no.23.
Literature:
J. Bautze, Indian Miniature Paintings c.1590–c.1850, exhibition catalogue, Amsterdam, 1987, no.23, p.61.
Loss of property, mental anguish,
Death of sons, terrible fear,
Death, sorrow, suffering:
A boar indicates all this.
[Inscribed in Sanskrit]
The present image depicts a lone boar, standing at the river’s edge. Its finely rendered hair and almost human eyes belie a robust figure with dangerously pointed tusks. The strange rust colored sky creates an ominous air–a sense of danger. According to the Sakunavali, the boar, graded neshta, is an ill omen. The rendering of the landscape, with the river’s zigzagging indentation of the foreground, and the differentiated colored background in rust and blue, are conventions of the Sangram Singh period. Compare the treatment of the water’s edge to a folio from the Sat Sai, produced in the same workshop (see A. Topsfeld, “Court Painting at Udaipur Art under the Patronage of the Maharanas of Mewar,” Artibus Asiae Supplementum 44, Zurich, 2002, p. 144, fig. 116).