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Lot Essay
This painting shows the moment Hanuman finally found Sita after exploring Lanka for her. Hanuman searched the great city throughout the night evading the powerful demons within and almost admitted defeat in the face of despair. He finally entered a beautiful Ashoka grove within a walled garden, watered by a stream and filled with birds and animals. Climbing a Shingshapa tree in the very centre he suddenly saw Sita, emancipated from sorrow, fasting and the performance of austerities. Closely guarded by ferocious demon women, who we see depicted in our illustration, Hanuman spoke softly to her from the branches of the tree, praising Rama to comfort her. After a long conversation in which he affirmed his identity to her, the emissary descends the tree and gives Sita Rama's ring as proof of his love and promise of rescue.
This present illustration is part of a known Ramayana series of 15 paintings which Jeremiah Losty attributed to Chamba. The architecture is particularly distinctive, with individual bricks and mortar carefully depicted. This is similar to the Sudama-Charita series of 1775-90 from Garhwal, yet the treatment of landscape and oceans is very close to that found in Chamba. The Chamba Aranya Kanda of 1780-85 is again similar but the present series lacks a little of that earlier refinement. Hence 1800-1810 is suggested to allow time for Garhwali stylistic influence to be felt following the arrival of artists in Chamba from Garhwal escaping the Gurkha conquest of 1804 (Simon Ray and Jeremiah Losty, 15 Paintings Depicting the Adventures of Hanuman on Lanka from the Ramayana, Simon Ray Ltd, 2016.) A painting from this series was sold in Christie’s New York, 23 March 2022, lot 475 and another in Christie's London, 27 October 2022, lot 106.
Dr Alma Latifi, a prominent member of the Indian civil service, collected Indian works of art from the 1930s until the 1950s. He amassed a large collection of Indian art, predominantly paintings. Some of these were loaned to the Royal Academy, London, for their exhibition The Art of India and Pakistan, 1947-48.