LILA HAVA: KRISHNA AND RADHA EXCHANGE CLOTHES


DUTCH-BENGAL SCHOOL, CIRCA 1900 Oil on canvas. 27 1/2 x 41 3/8 in. (69.7 x 105 cm)
|Also portraying Krishna and Radha exchanging clothes, an earlier painting from Garwhal has an elegant inscription elaborating on the subject, which Coomaraswamy translates: "The station of Radha being made Hari, and Hari, Radha. The twain with affections transposed, easily attain to blissful union." (Coomaraswamy, Catalogue of the Indian Collections in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Part V, Rajput Painting, p. 191, pl. CIII, no. CCCXLVII) Typical for the genre and period the work is unsigned. However, the naïve and foreshortened landscape suggests that, rather than the other way around, this lot was painted by an Indian artist trained in European modes. Although, the figures are well-formed and this painting might be seen as hybridizing the Bengali Kalighat style. Indian painters have always demonstrated a tremendous versatility in adapting their styles and techniques to the changing profiles of their donors, and the rise of European patrons in the 18th and 19th century was no exception. By the end of the 19th century the Dutch colony at Chinsurah in Calcutta, where this painting was likely made, became a major artistic hub attracting foreign and domestic patrons alike. Compare with a more European looking composition of an assemblage of Hindu gods sold at Sotheby's, London, 16 June 2009, lot 33. Provenance Ernest and Rosemarie Kanzler Foundation Sotheby's, New York, 18 & 19 April 2002, lot 376 Private American Collection