Lakshmi
1885
paint
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
1885
paint
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
Lakshmi is a 1885 paint by Unknown, a Impressionism work, depicting Kalighat, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.
This painting shows a woman sitting on a lotus flower. She’s dressed in bright red and gold clothes, with a crown of red dots on her head. A small owl sits at her feet, and she holds something in her left hand. The background has black leaves and orange flowers. The woman’s face is simple but expressive, with bold outlines and flat colors. The style looks different from what you’d expect—clean lines instead of soft shading. Look up kalighat to see how this style fits into Indian art traditions.
The artwork is an opaque watercolor painting on paper created in 1885, depicting the deity Lakshmi accompanied by her owl. It was acquired by the museum from Miss M. Steele in 1950, having been part of a collection inherited from her mother, a Sanskrit scholar at Cambridge in 1894. The collection may have been originally gathered by Steele’s grandmother, who had lived in India.
Read the full account in the museum source.
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