Well-educated and highly refined courtesans (tawaif) in Delhi, Lucknow, and other north Indian court cities in the 16th through early 20th centuries were employed by elite and wealthy patrons as singers, dancers, thespians, and teachers of social etiquette. Some became royal concubines and even married into the nobility. Courtesans helped perpetuate traditional north Indian music and dance. They were also influential in the development of modern Indian cinema.
This portrait of an unidentified or stereotyped courtesan reveals her high status and cultural sophistication through her abundance of bejeweled ornaments, exquisite brocaded silk sari, and henna-dyed fingertips. She gazes at the viewer with a gentle directness that belies her immodesty and glamorous allure. Some contemporaneous portraits of Indian courtesans are even more revealing in their attire. (For example, see P. Pal and V. Dehejia, From Merchants to Emperors: British Artists and India 1757–1930 (1986), p. 162, fig. 165.)
