c. 1870-1880

Krishna and Balarama Hear About the Demon in the Palm Grove

Krishna and Balarama, wearing crowns, are asked by a group of cowherd boys to kill the dreaded donkey demon Dhenuka, who lives in the grove of palm trees and eats anyone who enters. Despite differences in pose, color, and dress, all of the boys have the same face and the palm trees differ only in size. Although this painting was produced much later than other Panjab Hills paintings, it still features the idealized pastel landscape developed a century before. Now, however, the earlier fine and varied detail has become a cartoonlike repetition. It seems likely that this page was painted for a patron in the Panjab Plains who owned several earlier, partial Pahari Bhagavata Purana series and wanted to complete them or add additional sections.