Autumn Highlights

These two paintings belong to a well-known Pahari series of the Harivamsha (Genealogy of Hari [Vishnu]). Comprising 16,374 shlokas and traditionally credited to the ancient sage Vyasa, the text of the Harivamsha recounts the life of Krishna in a level of detail matched only by the Bhagavata Purana. This particular series, which consists of large number of paintings without a running text or even a brief synopsis on the reverse, is widely associated with the work of Purkhu, a leading artist of the Punjab Hills. Although Purkhu has no known paintings ascribed to him, his name is known from pilgrimage records in the area that establish his position within a family of professional painters.[i] His major patron was Raja Sansar Chand of Kangra (r. 1775-1823), who maintained a large painting workshop. Upon Sansar Chand’s loss of Kangra fort and town to Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1809, Purkhu apparently accompanied his patron as he moved from Kangra to the village of Samloti.[ii] If the early years of Purkhu’s long career were occupied primarily by portraits of his young patron and others at court, the years shortly after 1800 were spent illustrating or guiding the workshop production of several series, notably the Harivamsha, Gita Govinda, Rasikapriya, Shiva Purana, and Ramayana, most of which are large-scale in format and extensive in scope, regularly numbering more than a hundred paintings each.[iii]

 

Few other paintings from this dispersed Harivamsha series rise to this level of accomplishment. Apart from the reportedly large number of folios presently in the Government Museum, Chandigarh, a representative selection of other illustrations is in the Museum Rietberg (RVI 1901, published in B.N. Goswamy and E. Fischer, Masters of Indian Painting, vol. 2 (Zurich 2011), p. 726, fig. 5); Bonhams, New York, 20 July 2020, lot 835; Christie’s, London, 10 June 2015, lot 71; Sotheby’s, New York, 27 March 1991, lots 59, 60; and Sotheby’s, New York, 21 September 1985, lot 62.