Kishangarh painting, in addition to its distinctive facial style, is also renowned for its spectacular sunsets and panoramic landscapes. Epitomizing that tradition, this painting features a brilliant, fiery sunset in dramatic counterpoint to its rolling green hills, white palaces, and the prominent Lake Gundalao. The grand vistas shown in Kishangarh paintings must, however, be viewed with a deeper symbolic meaning than mere landscape. For, just as Krishna and Radha roamed the fields and forests of Brindavan, so too did Savant Singh and Bani Thani in their devotional emulation of the divine couple. In place of the rural terrain of Brindavan, the Kishangarh artists depicted the palaces and pleasure gardens of their own court as a setting for the lovers.
Although the ostensible subject of most Kishangarh paintings is the romance of Radha and Krishna, on another level of interpretation the paintings can be seen as allegories for the love of Savant Singh and Bani Thani, as well as symbolic equations of the divine and secular lovers. Although never explicitly expressed, this metaphorical identification is intimated by the presence of Savant Singh/ Nagari Das's poetry on the back of a number of the works.
Radha and Krishna are portrayed twice in this painting: once surrounded by female attendants in the prominent royal barge and again at the bottom, alone in a forest grove. This scene of continuous narration may illustrate a poem by Savant Singh that describes the ideal couple as first boating on the Jamuna River in Brindavan and subsequently trysting in a forest glen.
Writer Name:- Pratapaditya Pal