Two lovers in a pavilion, from an <em>Amarushataka</em> (Hundred poems of Amaru), or an unidentified erotic series
date: label: Date
content: ca. 1680
notes: label: School/Tradition
content: Malwa school
label: Label
content: In Central India, a minimalist yet evocative school of painting rather mysteriously emerged and then disappeared over the course of the seventeenth century. The vagaries of love and longing were its main subjects. Here, on a pitch-black night, within a pavilion with intensely red walls, a lover enthusiastically embraces his beloved, whose gesture of placing a hand on his chest is probably intended to convey modesty and inexperience. To the left of the pavilion, massive yellow lilies unfurl with surreal intensity, and a peacock perches on the pavilion's roof.
label: Label
content: The painting epitomizes the Central Indian style, which features a distinctive palette dominated by deep teal blue, black, red, and forest green, and which is conventionally, if imprecisely, identified as "Malwa." To emphasize surface rhythms and patterns over the illusion of depth, artists from this region flattened landscapes into blocks of color. They also created a distinctive figural type: a tall, angular woman who is always seen in profile and often wears a striped Central Indian skirt. The composition's completely black sky and the foliate scroll in the cartouche at the bottom are also hallmarks of Central Indian painting.
label: Label
content: Central Indian artists harnessed this rigorous formal restraint to convey a sense of desire, the dominant emotion within the classical tradition of Sanskrit poetry about love. The subject matter suggests the Amarushataka (Hundred poems of Amaru), which was also illustrated in Malwa. Several more explicit lovemaking scenes from Malwa, including one in the collection of the Walters Museum of Art, which may or may not be from an Amarushataka, feature a similar pavilion, a massive flower to its left, a pitch-black night, and a two-color foliate scroll in a cartouche on the lower board.
label: Label
content: In the mid-twentieth century, the Malwa style was particularly admired by western collectors, for whom its minimalism prefigured twentieth-century abstraction.
label: Provenance
content: To 1969
label: Provenance
content: Sundaram, New Delhi, India [1]
label: Provenance
content: From 1969 to 2001
label: Provenance
content: Ralph Benkaim (1914-2001), Beverly Hills, California, purchased from Sundaram, New Delhi, India in November 1969 [2]
label: Provenance
content: From 2001 to 2018
label: Provenance
content: Catherine Glynn Benkaim, Beverly Hills, California, by inheritance from Ralph Benkaim in 2001 [3]
label: Provenance
content: From 2018
label: Provenance
content: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, partial gift and purchase from Catherine Glynn Benkaim [4]
label: Provenance
content: Notes:
label: Provenance
content: [1] Ralph Benkaim purchased the painting from Sundaram, New Delhi in November 1969, several years before Indian paintings were classified as antiquities by the Indian government, according to his personal records via Catherine Glynn Benkaim.
label: Provenance
content: [2] See note 1.
label: Provenance
content: [3] See note 1.
label: Provenance
content: [4] See Acquisition Consideration Form, object file, Collections Management Office.
label: Collection
content: National Museum of Asian Art Collection
label: Previous custodian or owner
content: Sundaram (India, active 1960's)
label: Previous custodian or owner
content: Ralph and Catherine Benkaim
label: Previous custodian or owner
content: Catherine Glynn Benkaim (born 1946)
place: label: Origin
content: Malwa, Madhya Pradesh state, India
topic: label: Topic
content: peacock
label: Topic
content: lovers
label: Topic
content: pavilion
label: Topic
content: India
label: Topic
content: South Asian and Himalayan Art
label: Topic
content: Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection
label: Topic
content: romance
setName: label: See more items in
content: Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Collection
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Purchase and partial gift from the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection — funds provided by the Friends of the National Museum of Asian Art
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: S2018.1.20
objectType: label: Type
content: Painting
objectRights: label: Restrictions & Rights
content: CC0
physicalDescription: label: Medium
content: Opaque watercolor and gold on paper
label: Dimensions
content: H x W (overall): 21 × 15.9 cm (8 1/4 × 6 1/4 in)