India Erotic Miniature Painting in Unique Frame
Small Erotic Kama Sutra India hand painted artwork, featuring a couple in coitus. Drawing is gouache on thick cardboard type stock. Some aging: wear & tear, and visible water damage. It’s the very usual framing that makes it so special. The “frame” is actually a glass negative holder, meant for a 4 x 5 inch antique camera. A perfect and unusal fit. Measures 10 inches width x 8 inches height with frame.
Asking $145.
Literature
The numerous semi-independent Hindu rulers of the Kingdoms of Rajasthan, Central India and the Punjab hills retained to some extent their bold pre Mughal traditions of devotional and poetical manuscript illumination, but were extensively influenced by the Mughal style of court portraiture. This widespread influence of the Imperial court style throughout Northern India became to some extent a unifying factor in the diversity of regional production. It was a more naturalistic vision than had prevailed before in Indian art and its conventions were freely interpreted by Provincial Hindu artists who were also rooted in their own longstanding traditions of painting.
Erotic painting was thus influenced by the Muslim Moghal conquest, but for religious reasons there was no corresponding school of painting in the Arab world. Paintings such as these were often produced to illustrate the ancient Hindu text of the ‘Karma Sutra’.