Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
The heroine who waits anxiously for her absent lover (Utka Nayika)
c. 1800
- Medium
- Gum tempera on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Image: 16 x 10.2 cm (6 5/16 x 4 in.); Overall: 23.8 x 14.8 cm (9 3/8 x 5 13/16 in.)
- Culture
- Northern India, Pahari kingdoms
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Edward L. Whittemore Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Night has fallen. Love, moonlight, stars, and jasmine give the heroine the courage to face its dangers, but with a heightened sense of worry. Rain clouds approach, and the artist communicates her anxiety with nervous hand gestures and restless feet. She arranged a bed of leaves, but there is still no sign of her lover.
Pale colors, distant cityscapes, and wooded settings became popular in Pahari paintings of the late 1700s. Her long legs and eyes, as well as the proportions of her round head distinguish most Pahari paintings of this period.
