Dancing girl

Kettle, Tilly (1734-ca. 1786)

Item type:

painting

Date of creation:

1772

Height:

194.9 cm  (76 3/4 in.)

Width:

121.3 cm  (47 3/4 in.)

Technique / Medium:

oil on canvas

Place of creation:

Bhārat [India]

Description

Painting presents an interior scene with a lavishly costumed and bejeweled Indian woman standing in a dancing pose, right hand and right foot forward, holding a hookah stem in her left hand; two other women are visible in the outdoor background.

Iconclass

48C8422(+76121)
female dancer ( + Indian art)
41C7411
water-pipe, hookah, narghile
41D2
clothes, costume

RIdIM images

Image URLs

image link 1

Bibliographic references

Archer, Mildred. India and British portraiture, 1770-1825 (London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1979) 79, 457, 492, pl. I, fig. 31.

Archer, Mildred. "Tilly Kettle and the court of Oudh (1772-73)", Apollo 95/1 (February 1972) 98, fig. 4.

Bayly, C. A. The Raj, India and the British, 1600-1947 (London: National Portrait Gallery, 1990) 116-117, cat. no. 137.


Bhattacharya, Nandini. Reading the splendid body: Gender and consumerism in eighteenth-century British writing on India (Newark: Associated University Presses, Inc., 1998) 144.

Notes

Additional bibliographical references available on museum website (image link 1).

RIdIM record id

6243