Narasimha
1885
paint
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
1885
paint
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
Narasimha is a 1885 paint by Unknown, a Patna School of Painting work, depicting Kalighat, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.
Here’s a plainspoken friend’s take on Narasimha: You see a fierce lion-headed man ripping open a demon’s chest. Blood sprays in red streaks. One hand clutches a club; the other grips the demon’s hair. This painting mixes two styles: the bright colors of Impressionism and the sharp details of Realism. That mix feels unusual for a Hindu scene. It lives at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The painting is an opaque watercolor on paper from 1885, depicting Narasimha, the man-lion avatar of Vishnu, in the act of killing a victim. It was acquired by the museum from Miss M. Steele in 1950, part of a series inherited from her mother, a Sanskrit scholar at Cambridge in 1894. According to Miss Steele, the collection may have been originally gathered by her grandmother, who had lived in India.
Read the full account in the museum source.
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