An illustration from a dispersed ragamala series: Kuntala raga
Chamba or Bilaspur, circa 1690-1700
gouache on paper, red borders, inscribed in three different scripts Raga Kuntala son of Dipaka verso, with stamp of the royal library of Mandi
21.5 x 15.6 cm.
Footnotes:
Provenance
Mandi royal collection, inv. no. 2485, by 1841.
Private collection, London, acquired at Sotheby's, The Indian Sale, 24th May 2007, lot 4.
Christie's, Garden of Epics: a Private Collection of Indian Paintings, 10th June 2013, lot 7.

Standing before a pigeon coop, a nobleman feeds one of the birds, while his wife stands behind him with her hand on his shoulder. A pair of pigeons and another of doves sit at the base of the coop in the foreground. These birds mirror the tender interaction (unusual in this context) and shared pleasure between the couple.

This painting is from a dispersed album once in the Mandi royal collection, consisting of various Hindu and Rajput subjects, such as ragamalas and avatars, produced by a single studio. Whereas they had previously been thought to stem from Bilaspur, Glynn has recently reattributed them to the court of Chamba (see Glynn et al., Ragamala, London 2011, p. 34).

Four folios from this series in the Kronos Collection are published in McInerney et al., Divine Pleasures, New York 2016, pp. 142-149, nos. 45-48. Other paintings from the same series were sold at Sotheby's, New York, 23 May 2006, lots 86-92; 29 March 2006, lots 164, 165, 167 & 168; and at Christie's, London, 25 April 2013, lot 184; Christie's, South Kensington, 10 June 2013, lots 5 and 6, and Christie's, New York, 18 September 2013, lot 357A.
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