Untitled (Manbhanjan)

This Early Bengal oil is charming for Krishna’s attempt to mollify his beloved Radha (with the assistance of one of her friends), who is apparently hurt. However, it is the historicity of the work that makes it significant. Early Bengal oils were the result of monumental socio-political changes in the subcontinent in the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries which saw the mingling of traditional Indian themes and Mughal miniature stylisation with the ‘modern’/ European medium of oil. The use of gold leaf in this work attests to its creation for Calcutta’s elite, which could be a Marwari business family as evident from the western Indian style of clothing of the subjects.