Jamini Prakash Gangooly was a nephew of Rabindranath Tagore and a student of the British painter C.L. Palmer, who later joined the Government Art School, Calcutta. In 1916, when Abanindranath Tagore left the Calcutta Art School, Jamini Prakash was appointed its Vice-Principal.

Gangooly primarily painted portraits, landscapes and the mountainous region of Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas. In this large, highly atmospheric oil painting the delicate application of thin layers of paint gives the work subtle luminosity and the compositional elements combine to produce a highly charged emotive atmosphere with the divine figure a powerful and serine force.

In Indian mythology, yakshas are divine beings and guardian spirits of the natural world, with custody over mountainous regions and bodies of water. It is believed that the worship of yakshas, along with other deities such as nagas and fertility goddesses, traces its origins to ancient indigenous cultures in India. Yaksha sculptures stand as some of the earliest depictions of deities, predating even the images of bodhisattvas and Brahmanical gods. Their influence extended to the representation of attendants for gods and monarchs in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain artistic traditions.

The subject of this painting is from the story of Meghadūta by Kālidāsa, one of the great Sanskrit poems:
“The story of the Meghaduta, or Cloud Messenger, describes how a Yaksha, one of the attendants of Kuvera, the god of wealth and keeper of the treasures of the earth, whose paradise is Alaka, in the Himalayas, was banished and separated from his beloved bride for some offence committed against the god. Ona lonely peak in Central India, called Ramagiri (Rama’s Mountain), when the month of June ushered in the monsoon, he culls the wildflowers as a propitiatory offering, and then addresses a fervent prayer to a majestic cloud to carry a message to his beloved, mourning his absence in Alaka. The poem goes on to picture the beautiful countries over which the cloud messenger would pass, together with the birds and spirits which inhabit the upper regions of the air.”

E.B. Havell, Studio Talk, The Studio Magazine, London, 1905, Vol. 35, p.78 & 79