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A prince celebrating Holi with palace women on a terrace at night (recto); calligraphy of a quatrain (verso)
c. 1760
- Medium
- Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Page: 28.2 x 20.2 cm (11 1/8 x 7 15/16 in.)
- Culture
- India, Farrukhabad, Mughal, 18th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Gift in honor of Madeline Neves Clapp; Gift of Mrs. Henry White Cannon by exchange; Bequest of Louise T. Cooper; Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund; From the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection
- 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
Images of pleasure and play abound in Mughal paintings of the latter half of the 1700s. Under a full moon reflected off a river and by the light of candles, a prince celebrates the spring festival of Holi with a group of palace women. Holi festivities include the boisterous tradition of smearing one another with colored powders—shown heaped on dishes—or shooting colored liquid using plunger guns.
