Galaxy of Musicians

A crowd of women sit together on a carpet, most of them with an instrument, among them a veena and a violin. They are dressed in the clothes of different parts of India, from a Nair woman with a veena at left to a Marathi woman at the centre and a Muslim courtesan on the right. One at the back wears a European hat.

Ravi Varma painted it in 1889 for the Maharaja of Mysore. It is at the Jaganmohan Palace. It is less a portrait of a real ensemble than a survey: the variety of dress, jewellery and bearing across the country, held together by music.

The picture shows the qualities that made him popular: European oil technique, careful fabrics and jewellery, and figures arranged like a group photograph. The same naturalism drew criticism in the early twentieth century. His signature is on the carpet at lower left.