AN ILLUSTRATION TO A BIHARI SATSAI SERIES


MEWAR, CIRCA 1719Opaque watercolor, ink and gold on paper; two lines of Devanagari in the top register and numbered '497'. Image: 7 1/2 x 7 1/8 in. (19 x 18.1 cm);Folio: 10 x 8 3/4 in. (25.4 x 22.1 cm)
|In this painting a noble leaves his lover unsatisfied and distressed. The turmoil and upset of their quarel is echoed by the divergent flight path of the blue birds above. Bihari Lal's Sat Sai follows in the tradition of religious texts exploring the romance of Krishna and Radha. It contains couplets on neeit (moral lessons), shringara (love), and bhakti(devotion). Bihari Lal was a poet at the court of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan. He later moved to the court of Raja Jai Singh of Amber. Provenance Private German Collection