Indian / A Lady Playing the Tanpura / ca. 1730-40

Indian
A Lady Playing the Tanpura
ca. 1730-40
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Creator Nationality: Asian; Indian Sub-Continent; Indian
Creator Name-CRT: Indian
Title: A Lady Playing the Tanpura
Title Type: Object name
View: Full View
Creation Start Date: 1730
Creation End Date: 1740
Creation Date: ca. 1730-40
Object Type: Drawings and Watercolors
Materials and Techniques: Ink, gold, opaque and transparent watercolor on paper
Dimensions: 18 1/2 x 13 1/4 in. (47 x 33.66 cm)
AMICA Contributor: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Owner Location: New York, New York, USA
ID Number: 1996.100.1
Credit Line: Fletcher Fund, 1996
Rights: http://www.metmuseum.org/
Context:

The Kishangarh atelier is renowned not only for paintings but also for large-scale drawings that were tinted and highly finished. Images of women drinking wine, holding flowers, or playing instruments became a popular genre in Rajasthani painting during the first half of the eighteenth century. They evolved from imperial Mughal depictions of large concert parties in which female entertainers served an auxiliary function. Here one such entertainer has been transformed into a "nayika," an idealized Hindu heroine and personification of female beauty. She has just plucked a string of her tanpura (a drone instrument of the lute family, played by women) and is intently listening to its resonance. The drawing must date from before the 1740s, at which time a more idiosyncratic and exaggerated facial type became the vogue in Kishangarh.

AMICA ID: MMA_.1996.100.1
AMICA Library Year: 2000
Media Metadata Rights: Copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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