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Royal lovers watching rain clouds: The month of Bhadon, from a Barahmasa
c. 1790
- Medium
- Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Image: 13 x 9 cm (5 1/8 x 3 9/16 in.); Overall: 20.7 x 15.2 cm (8 1/8 x 6 in.)
- Culture
- Northern India, Pahari kingdoms
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
A king enjoys a stormy evening in the women’s quarters of the palace. A woman guards the door; another holds the royal fly whisk. He gestures toward two women playing instruments, but the king and his beloved have eyes only for one another as they tenderly touch hands.
This painting comes from a series that depicts scenes associated with each month of the Hindu calendar. Bhadon straddles August and September toward the end of the monsoon season when rivers are swollen, and rainstorms prevent travel and warfare. For this reason, men remain at home, and Bhadon is famed as a month for lovemaking.
