An Illustrated Folio from a Ragamala Series: Dipak Raga, Signed Sital Das, Murshidabad or Lucknow, circa 1780-1790

Christies London, 4th October 2012, lot 176.

Art Passages, San Francisco, 2015.

This painting, depictinga couple seated on a bed beneath a rolled curtain within a colonnaded pavilion, and the preceding lot (lot 544), are part of a ragamala set from Lucknow, c. 1780. Six leaves from this set are in the British Museum, and two in the Bodleian Library. The British Museum paintings are described in Losty's ""The Art of the Book in India", item 110 on page 135, and also referred to in Falk's book on the India Office paintings. The Johnson albums included a set of drawings of ragamalas which were evidently a preliminary or duplicate set for the British Museum paintings, since they match the finished paintings exactly. The back of each of these paintings has a pencil notation , in French, naming the artists, plus the initials "D de L". They are from the collection of a certain Duc de Luynes formed in the late 18th century.