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Royal Women Celebrating Diwali
c. 1760
- Medium
- gum tempera and gold on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Image: 20.5 x 24.7 cm (8 1/16 x 9 3/4 in.)
- Culture
- Northern India, Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Lined along the eaves, the top of the marble lattice railing, and the rims of the boats on the river are candles and butter lamps lit in celebration of a New Year festival. A princess on a golden armchair lights sparklers with her friends. In the boats and on the far shore men set off sparklers under the light of a magnificent firework display under the full moon.
The style of this work is typical of Mughal painting from the mid-1700s, when scenes of domestic life among women of the court were a favorite subject for the imperial artists.
