- Museum number
- 1974,0617,0.7.33
- Description
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Opaque watercolour painting of two conjurers, who are devotees of the smallpox goddess, Mariamman. The man with closely cropped beard and a moustache, wears short knee-length trousers tied with a white sash at the waist and two necklaces of coloured beads, with earrings in both the earlobe and the helix. On his forehead and chest are tripundra (three horizontal marks). In the folds of his large turban is a bunch of margosa leaves. He beats a round tambourine with two sticks. His wife wears a dark red sari with a striped pattern draped over her lower body, with a white blouse and jewellery. In her right hand she holds a stick, in her left a bunch of margosa leaves, like those stuck in her husband’s turban. On her head she balances a vessel containing an open flame. An elaborate tilaka emphasized by white dots adorns her forehead. The background is yellow and the foreground dull green.
- Production date
- 18thC(late)
- Dimensions
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Height: 24.70 centimetres
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Width: 17.40 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- Dallapiccola 2010:
This painting comes from an album of forty-three paintings on light cardboard depicting different trades and occupations. The majority of drawings follow a uniform layout: a man and wife in their typical attire holding the tools of their trade stand against a monochrome background. The couples are shown in either frontal or three-quarter view; attached to their feet are heavy, looped shadows. Although by and large the faces are stereotyped, occasionally there is one which could well be a portrait, e.g. the Brahmin (1974,0617,0.7.22). Dress, headgear and military uniforms are rendered with documentary precision. Special attention is lavished on textiles and jewellery. An important clue for the dating of this album comes from 1974,0617,0.7.34, showing a ‘Sepah Dragoon – a Mosleim’. His rifle bears the inscription ‘Harrison’ and a date (1779). This album’s stylistic similarities with a series of drawings of castes and occupations in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, AL 9128 (1–36), suggests a date c. 1780–90. Among the forty-three drawings contained in this album, 1974,0617,0.7.1-38 are by one artist; 1974,0617,0.7.40 is by a second; and four (1974,0617,0.7.39 & 41-43) are by a third. These latter four drawings introduce elements of the surroundings, such as a house being built in the background, a meadow or tufts of grass, and some implements of the trade in the foreground. The three hands are completely different, and it is likely that these paintings were bought separately and eventually bound together with the remaining thirty-eight.
- Location
- On display (G33/dc66b/s1)
- Exhibition history
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Exhibited:
2012 Sept – 2013 Jan, BM Galleries, ‘Ritual and revelry: the art of drinking in Asia’ (p.16 only)
BM, Gallery 33, Dec 2018 - Dec 2019
- Acquisition date
- 1974
- Acquisition notes
- Transferred from the Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books (OMPB).
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 1974,0617,0.7.33
- Additional IDs
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Miscellaneous number: 17424