COMPANY SCHOOL, NORTH INDIA, MID 19TH CENTURY

This rare depiction of Afghan women with their burqa's lifted showing their extensive gold jewellery follows in a tradition of ethnographic painting and drawing which was popular in 19th Century India. For a slightly earlier and well-known depiction of Afghan men attributed to North India circa 1820-30 see Pratapaditya Pal and Vidya Dehejia, From Merchants to Emperors: British Artists and India, 1757-1930, New York, 1986, fig. 169, p. 164.