The Young Princess Absorbed in Portraying Her... Lot n° 4

Specifications: Water Color Painting on Paper Artist:Kailash Raj 6 inch X 9 inch A timeless theme in all forms of art : painting and sculpture, besides literature, sometimes this pensive disposition, as in this miniature, revealing in the form of writing a letter as at the World Heritage site of Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh where at Parshvanatha temple in one of the sculptures a young maiden has been represented as writing a letter, and sometimes, making the portrait of the loved one as the great Sanskrit poet Kalidasa represented king Dushyanta in one of his best known dramas, the Abhijnana Shakuntalam, as portraying Shakuntala, his love, after his memory is restored and he realises his folly and yearns for her, this miniature, a contemporary work, represents this classicism : a young princess in pensive mood lost in memories of her love engaged in painting the portrait of her lover, the prince.The princess has painted the prince in a long white ‘choga’ – a gown descending down the feet with full sleeves, tight-fitted breast-part and flared skirt, but seems not to approve this colourless whiteness of the prince’s ensemble, perhaps not finding in it the intensity of emotions that reveals in colours. The prince’s likeness : his face, figure and costume, has been represented and the portrait is almost complete but the princess is still holding her brush over it, close to the painted figure’s heart, as if meditating how this formless, colourless white be transformed into the love’s colours and kindle into his heart the same intensity of love as she has for him. After the burst of Vallabha’s Pushtimarga cult in Rajasthan most of the princes not only had Krishna as their principal deity but many chose to style themselves like Krishna painting them in blue, wearing symbolic ‘pitambara’ – yellow garment and even peacock feather cresting their crowns. However, not merely in pursuance to this cult, the princess seems to have