Gwalior. Urwai
1890
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1890
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Gwalior. Urwai is a 1890 by Photoglob Co., a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a steep cliff carved with giant stone figures, tiny people walking below them on a dirt road. This is a 19th-century photo print of 15th-century Hindu sculptures in Gwalior, India. The faces were recut after being damaged in the 1500s. The colors—soft blues, greens, and browns—were added later in the studio, not in the original photo. To see more early colorized prints like this, look up Photoglob Co. (Zurich, active c. 1890–1910).
The sculptures were carved into the steep sides of the cliffs below Gwalior’s fort in the mid-1400s, but the faces were re-cut after the images were defaced in 1527. The tiny visitors depicted on the road emphasize their monumental scale. The colors in this image are imagined, added later in the studio in a lithographic printing process that produces colorized ink-on-paper prints from black-and-white photographic negatives.
These sculptures depict Jinas, who are venerated by followers of the Jain religion of India, one of the oldest religions in the world.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Your cart is empty
Explore artworks →
