FROM A NALA-DAMAYANTI SERIES: ELEPHANTS DESTROYING THE CAMP OF THE MERCHANTS Kangra, Pahari Hills, North India, 1800-30 Opaque pigments on paper, the horizontal composition depicting a scene from the Nala-Damayanti series, Damayanti portrayed three times, firstly in the far distance resting at the camp of the merchants travelling with her, then to the bottom right corner witnessing a herd of maddened elephants destroying the camp and killing the merchants, then portrayed whilst approaching the cows and cowherds saving her to the left of the composition, one of the cowherd boys with a spear trying to scare off the elephants, a long river dividing the two strips of green land, the scene framed by light blue and red borders, the verso numbered 22, mounted on a white cardboard frame, the folio 28.7cm x 40cm. Provenance:Eva and Konrad Seitz Collection. Published: J. P. Losty, A Mystical Realm of Love: Pahari Paintings from the Eva & Konrad Seitz Collection, London, 2017, p. 302, cat. 84. Literature: Dallapiccola, A., Princesses et courtisanes, a travers les miniatures indiennes, Galerie Marco Polo, 1978 Goswamy, B.N., Pahari Paintings of the Nala-Damayanti Theme, National Museum of India. New Delhi, 1975 Goswamy, B.N., and Fischer, E., ‘The First Generation after Manaku and Nainsukh of Guler’ in Beach, M.C., Fischer, E., and Goswamy, B.N., Masters of Indian Painting, Artibus Asiae, Zurich, 2011, pp. 687–718 Losty, J.P., Sita Ram: Picturesque Views of India – Lord Hastings’s Journey from Calcutta to the Punjab, 1814–15, Roli Books, New Delhi, 2015 Poster, Amy G., et al., Realms of Heroism: Indian Paintings at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, 1994 The superb draughtsmanship quality, the realism and the incorporation of chronologically-distant and consequential scenes into one, all features evident in this painting, lead to suggest an attribution to the Pahari school of Kangra. The scene opens to the right, in the merchant's camp surrounded by a thick mist at night. The wild elephants rampaging and trampling the dormant merchants are portrayed with great attention to details and dynamism. The depiction of Damayanti with her wide staring eyes and ragged cloth seems to depart from the rigid conventions of Indian portraiture, moving instead progressivelytowards a more realistic, human-focused approach, where feelings, such as terror and sadness in this case, play a more prominent part. The collection of Eva and Konrad Seitz, to which this painting once belonged, contains several important examples from the different established schools of Pahari painting. Konrad first went to India as a young German diplomat in the late 1960s. Since then, his passion for Indian paintings only grew stronger. He and his wife started enthusiastically collecting Pahari paintings, making them one of a small group of pioneer collectors in this field who recognised the importance of these schools. The German couple is known for having assembled one of the largest collections of ‘first generation after Nainsukh’, Guler-style painting, part of which is now exhibited in the Rietberg Museum in Zurich.