TWO PORTRAITS OF INDIAN COURTLY LADIES
Delhi and Jaipur, Northern India, late 19th century

Opaque pigments, pencil and black ink heightened with gold on paper, comprising two portraits of Indian courtesans, including a seated portrait with a courtly lady wrapped in a green shawl, seated on a gold-embroidered madder red floral carpet, hanging above her three coloured glass lamps in the shape of Islamic mosque lamps, the painting imitating the qualities of 19th-century black and white photograph portraits, marked at the back no. 10, framed within bright red borders, 20cm x 15cm; and an oval portrait of a heavily bejewelled lady in typical Jaipur style, her forehead marked with the Shaivite tripundra, symbolising Shiva's threefold power of will (icchāśakti), knowledge (jñānaśakti), and action (kriyāśakti), 23cm x 18cm.