Leaf from a Kalighat album: Maid bringing a hookah to a lady (recto); Krishna weighed against precious objects(?) (verso)

The recto depicts a maid presenting a hookah to a lady, a quotidian domestic moment rendered in the characteristic simplified style of Kalighat paintings.

The work belongs to the Kalighat tradition of 19th‑century Calcutta and portrays two distinct scenes on its two sides.

The recto depicts a maid presenting a hookah to a lady, a quotidian domestic moment rendered in the characteristic simplified style of Kalighat paintings.

The verso shows the deity Krishna in a weighing motif, an iconographic reference to mythological narratives in which the god’s spiritual value is measured against material wealth.

Together the images combine everyday life with devotional symbolism, reflecting the syncretic cultural milieu of colonial Bengal and the role of such folk artworks as both entertainment and religious expression.

This painting was created in Kolkata in 1890 by an unknown artist. The work is a single leaf from a Kalighat album, featuring a scene of a maid bringing a hookah to a lady on the recto and a depiction of Krishna weighed against precious objects on the verso. It was acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2003, where it is cataloged under the accession number 2003.107.

The specific commission history or original owner prior to the museum's acquisition is not documented in the available records.

The work is held by the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, Ohio, where it is included in the institution’s collection of Indian popular prints. It originates from an album produced in Kolkata around 1890, as recorded in the museum’s cataloging data. The recto illustrates a maid presenting a hookah to a lady, while the verso depicts Krishna weighed against precious objects.

The museum’s records do not provide an explicit accession number for this leaf, and no exhibition history has been documented for the piece in publicly available sources.