Piety

Around the 1890s, numerous printmaking studios were established in Calcutta, each working with different artists to produce images on the same theme. Among them, paintings of Sundaris (‘beautiful women’), featuring sensual portrayals of courtesans, became popular. This artwork is an example of a later Sundari, displaying a more intricate iconography. Unlike other typical images where the Sundaris are dressed in translucent white sarees with black borders, a palette that identifies them as courtesans, the figure in this artwork wears a red saree, the colour of fertility reserved for gods. In the backdrop we can see a relief sculpture of an angel choking a goose, a Greco-Egyptian metaphor for good triumphing over evil. To its right is a cuckoo-clock—showing the time at half-past-midnight—and a pillar covered in roses. The symbolism, though subtle in comparison, still alludes to sexual rituals, along with an increased appetite for colonially produced artworks and household objects for consumption.