A Tanjore painting of the Gajendra Moksha, South India, late 19th-early 20th century, gouache on paper heightened with gold, mounted, glazed and framed, 28 x 19.5cm. Whilst going to pick lotus flowers, the elephant-king Gajendra was seized upon by a monstrous crocodile, or makara. Despite a long struggle, the creature would not let go and sensing that death had come to their king, the rest of the elephant herd turned to forsake him. In desperation Gajendra held a lotus flower aloft in a petition to Vishnu. This scene was popular in Vaishnava literature with the plight of the elephant ‘symbolising the inexorable entrapment of the human soul by worldly illusion, from which the invocation to Vishnu brings release’ (Andrew Topsfield, ed., In the Realm of Gods and Kings: Art of India - Selections from the Polsky Collections and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Asia Society and Museum, New York, 2004, p. 117). Please refer to department for condition report