- Title
- Krishna and Radha Enjoying a Feast and Fireworks
- Date Made
- early 19th century
- Medium
- Opaque watercolor and gold on paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 9 1/4 x 13 in. (23.5 x 33.02 cm); Sheet: 9 3/4 x 13 1/2 in. (24.77 x 34.29 cm)
- Accession Number
- AC1999.127.42
- Collecting Area
- South and Southeast Asian Art
- Curatorial Notes
This painting presents the blue-skinned Krishna and his consort Radha seated together in a palace pavilion and about to begin a feast laid out before them by adoring female attendants (gopis). The sparklers going off around them and the numerous flames along the roofline and those outlining the five palaces rising out of the lake in the background suggest that the scene is taking place during the popular Diwali Festival of Lights.
A Hindi song inscribed on the back of the painting describes the feast and the participants:
"The beloved mountain-holder [Krishna] is seated in a pavilion, which is an excellent bower, beautiful and splendorous.
All along there are rows of shimmering tapers, and they [gopis] have brought cloth-covered platters filled with fruits, candy, pan [betel- leaf quids], and flowers;
[The gopis] are like golden creepers and doe-eyed, they look beautiful,
and Krishna is like the tamal tree [dark-barked tree].
They exchange expressions of amatory sentiments that roll like royal waves and full of feeling visit the damsels of Braj and bring presents, which they place before the Rasik Pritam [Krishna] while singing songs, sweet as juicy mangoes."
(Translated by Naval Krishna.)
- Selected Bibliography
- Pal, Pratapaditya; Markel, Stephen; Leoshko, Janice. Pleasure Gardens of the Mind: Indian Paintings from the Jane Greenough Green Collection. Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd.: Los Angeles, 1993.
