Fralin Museum: Realms of Earth and Sky

Catalogue of the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginias exhibition entitled "Realms of Earth and Sky", a collection of Indian paintings from the 15th to the 19th century.

The Fralin Museum of Art began collecting South Asian art seriously in 1992, acquiring a collection that today ranks among the best held by a university museum in the southeast. From Aug. 29 through Dec. 21, 2014, The Fralin will present Realms of Earth and Sky, an exhibition comprising a selection of these works, supplemented by others drawn from private collections.

The paintings represent a number of different artistic traditions and range across a span of five centuries. Themes include the stylistic relationship between Mughal and Rajput paintings and the function of book illustration. In meticulously rendered tableaux, viewers will encounter scenes ranging from the opulence of the Mughal court to the actions of gods in the forms of men, and from lively battles to depictions of intimate courtly love. The styles can be intricately refined or sweepingly bold, all contained in the small scale of the manuscript or album page.

Portraiture, religious and literary texts, and Ragamala paintings are particularly well represented in the The Fralin collection of Indian painting. Highlights will include a rare sixteenth-century imperial Mughal painting by Khem Karan, a Rasikapriya illustration done by the famous seventeenth-century Mewari artist Sahibdin, and a portrait of the Guler ruler Raja Bishan Singh, attributed to Nainsukh.

This app documents much of The Fralin Indian painting collection and features catalogue entries by curator Daniel Ehnbom and Krista Gulbransen. As many of the exceptional works in The Fralin’s collection remain unpublished, the app represents an important contribution to current study of Indian painting.