Vilaval Ragini
date: label: Date
content: ca. 1680
notes: label: School/Tradition
content: Malwa school
label: Inscriptions
content: Verso: birāvar rāgīnī 3
label: Label
content: In Central India, a minimalist yet evocative school of painting rather mysteriously emerged in the seventeenth century. Over the course of the century, the style and the palette of Malwa painting grew gradually more complex, as seen here in the elaborately decorated pavilion and its flamboyant garden.
label: Label
content: Vilaval ragini is a joyous musical mode, embodied as a smiling woman looking at herself in a mirror as she gets ready to meet her lover. The interior room is a bright red, which harkens back to an earlier style of painting, the exterior is exuberant, with ornate decorations and polychrome. Flowers bloom magically outside the pavilion under a pitch-black sky.
label: Label
content: Raga (Sanskrit, color or passion) is the term for a classical music mode, a set framework for improvisation. Having originated in the first millennium, ragas were systematized and classified during the thirteenth through sixteenth century, they were classified into ragamalas, meaning garlands of musical modes. A common system recognized six raga husbands, each "married" to five ragini wives for a total of thirty-six "families." Families of musical modes sometimes included sons or ragaputras as well. By the fifteenth century, ragas had become associated with specific moods, times, seasons, affective properties, deities, lovers, and heroes. Around 1590-1620, illustrated ragamala series became a favorite subject for Rajput patrons, as well as for some Mughals, such as Abd-ur Rahim, patron of the Freer Ramayana and the Laud Ragamala. Specific iconographies were developed for depicting each mode. These formulae lent themselves to variations, which were sometimes dependent on region.
label: Label
content: Illustrated ragas evoke mood and engender feeling, as do musical compositions. But the connection seems to be indirect. Although some connoisseurs of music may have internally "heard" a composition when viewing its image, ragamalas were probably more broadly valued for their poetic and pictorial pleasures. The commission of a ragamala series would also have been understood as a sign of a patron's cultivated sensibility.
label: Provenance
content: To 1968
label: Provenance
content: Sundaram, New Delhi, India. [1]
label: Provenance
content: From 1968 to 2001
label: Provenance
content: Ralph Benkaim (1914-2001), Beverly Hills, California, purchased from Sundaram, New Delhi, India. [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, 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: flower
label: Topic
content: night
label: Topic
content: woman
label: Topic
content: ragamala
label: Topic
content: pavilion
label: Topic
content: India
label: Topic
content: South Asian and Himalayan Art
label: Topic
content: Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection
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: S2018.1.21
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): 20.6 × 14.9 cm (8 1/8 × 5 7/8 in)