National Museum, Delhi Hero Enjoying The Bathing Beauty 1770 ADDetails Unknown
Beauty expresses itself in various shades but the scenes related to snana and shringara, that is, bathing and adornment reveal beauty in its utmost lustre. The Indian art has produced some of the best examples of female beauty by exploring it during a bath or in adornment. For them, a woman, while bathing in heavenly blue transparent waters of either a river or spring, has always stood transformed into an altogether different person, a figure endowed with celestial beauty.
In this painting, the heroine has just finished her bath and helped by a maid who brought her costume in a tray is wearing her garments. Her black long hair cascade down on her back. Her lover, secretly looking at her from the window of the upper floor, is overwhelmed by her naive charms and beauty.
The composition is relatively simple. The blue tiled courtyard of her house and the green banana plants in the background greatly balance it. The Kotah painter draws his figures with remarkable assurance, imparting to the women in particular a look of great innocence and charm and converts thus his theme into a piece of pure artistic delight.
