The Metropolitan Museum of Art in the New York city will exhibit around a hundred paintings from the royal courts of Rajasthan and Punjab. Many of these art from the 16th and the early 19th century never displayed publicly before.

The exhibition named  'Divine Pleasures: Painting from India's Rajput Courts - The Kronos Collections'  is scheduled to be run from June 14 through September at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met).

These paintings show "compelling episodes" from Hindu epic and poetic literature of the Indian subcontinent.  Most of the paintings in the collection are a gift by Steven Kossak from his family's Kronos Collections.

These paintings were created mainly between the 16th and the early 19th century for the royal courts of Rajasthan and the Punjab Hills in northern India. Kossak, formerly a curator in The Met's Department of Asian Art assembled the collection for over nearly four decades.

The Met director and CEO Thomas Campbell said that, "These distinguished paintings constitute one of the premier collections of this material in private hands, and their eventual addition to The Met collection will transform the Museum's holdings of Rajput painting."

There will be three major sections in the exhibition like, Early Rajput and Rajasthan, early Pahari (Punjab Hills), and later Pahari.

"Rajput court painting was mainly intended for royal delectation, to amplify through the artistic fantasy manifest in the pictures, well-known religious, quasi-religious, and secular texts and subjects. The power and magic of the images transcends the subjects they portray," it added.

A galaxy of stylistic expression would be demonstrated in the exhibition through compelling examples of the Early Rajput Style; the later schools of Bikaner, Kishangarh, Bundi, Kota, and Mewar; as well as many of the small courts of the Punjab Hills:  Bahsoli, Bahu, Bislalpur, Guler, Kangra, Mandi, Chamba, Mankot, and Nurpur.

Nandini