A Vallabhacharya priest standing in a landscape holding a lotus flower
Kishangarh, circa 1820
gouache and gold on paper, gold border
163 x 95 mm.
Footnotes:
Provenance
Christie's, Islamic Art, Indian Miniatures, Rugs and Carpets, London, 8th-9th October 1991, lot 30.
Heil Collection, Berlin, 1991-2016.

The inscription on the reverse reads: koṭāṃbāre, the meaning of which is unclear, but is probably the name of the priest.

The priest's forehead is decorated with a Vaishnava tilak. His right hand holds a lotus, and in his left he has a bidi or pan preparation. The Kishangarh rulers were followers of the Vallabha or Pushtimarg cult and worshipped Krishna under the form Madanmohanji, while their personal deity Kalyanraiji was given to Raja Rup Singh by Gopinath Dikshit, the grandson of Vitthalnathji.

For three similar paintings of priests at Kishangarh, see Christie's, Images of Rajasthan: a private collection of Indian paintings, (online), 17th-27th May 2016, lots 61-63. For similar landscape backgrounds in small Kishangarh paintings of the mid-18th Century see J. P. Losty, Indian Miniatures from the James Ivory Collection, Francesca Galloway, London 2010, nos. 40 & 41). For a painting of a woman standing on a terrace with a similar green hill behind her, which is attributed to Dalchand working at Kishangarh, see T. McInerney, 'Dalchand', in M. C. Beach, E. Fischer, B. N. Goswamy, Masters of Indian Painting, Zürich 2011, p. 577, fig. 13.