Kedara Ragini

This artwork is part of the 34-sheet Ragamala album. Ragamala paintings were designed to induce the perceptive viewer to experience the same mood created by listening to the eponymous motifs in calssical Indian music. Kedara Ragini evokes a peaceful atmosphere linked with winter and night. In the pavilion on the lake, a feudal lord listens to an ascetic with a musical instrument veena, the lord’s aide stands on the right and a sleeping ferryman remains in the boat. The man with unmistakeable features in the centre appears as a protagonist in several sheets. He is most likely a specific person, maybe the man who commissioned the album. The album appears to have originated in Avadh in northern India at one of the local Mughal schools established in the courts of local rulers in the 18th century, especially in northern India, at a time when central Mughal rule in Delhi was declining.