Krishna and Radha in Dalliance, attributed to Chokha (active ca. 1799–1826), India / Rajasthan / Devgarh, circa 1810

Private English collection, 1970s – 2012. 

Oliver Forge and Brendan Lynch Ltd, March 2012.

This evocative painting portrays the divine lovers Radha and Krishna in an intimate night time embrace on a palace terrace. They lie inter-connected on an outdoor bed with a white coverlet against vibrant red bolsters. Blue-skinned Krishna is half dressed in a brilliant vermilion gold-flecked dhoti as he tenderly enfolds Radha, herself barely covered in her diaphanous saffron dhoti and elaborate jewelry.

Set around them on the green terrace carpet are golden vessels and other fine accoutrements - lending an sense of luxurious intimacy to the composition.  Behind the figures, the white marble architecture of a small garden pavilion rises against a moonlit sky. In the interior of the pavilion are two red niches surrounded by multi-color tiles - a motif we see often in other works attributed to Chokha. A flowering garden dense with marigolds and white blossoms frames the composition on all sides. A white canopy flutters overhead.

Chokha was the son of the celebrated Devgarh painter Bagta.  He was trained in the large court ateliers of Udaipur under the patronage of Maharana Bhim Singh before returning to Devgarh around 1811, where he succeeded his father as the leading court painter under Rawat Gokul Das II. It was at Devgarh that Chokha fully developed his individualized approach, breaking away from the conventions of the broader Mewar school. Together, father and son evolved a style distinguished by deep atmospheric shading, dramatic nocturnal settings, and stylized figures with distinctive facial characteristics favoring robust, heavily-modeled figures with rounded faces and large, heavy-lidded eyes as we see in the present work.

Their painting tradition was carried forward by Chokha’s son Baijnath, making this one of the more remarkable painterly dynasties in the history of Rajput art.  Works by Chokha are today held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and other major institutions worldwide.

Literature:

Beach, Milo C. "Bagta and Chokha" essay in Milo C. Beach, Eberhard Fischer and B.N. Goswamy, "Masters of Indian Painting II 1650-1900", Zurich 2011, pp. 733-752.

Topsfield, Andrew "Court Painting at Udaipur: Art Under the Patronage of the maharanas of Mewar" Artibus Asiae Supplementum 44, Zurich 2002 pp. 205-243.

For further reference:

Christies New York sale catalog March 22, 2023 lot 414.

Christies London sale catalog March 31, 2022 lot 103.