A black beret, a coral mouth, a shawl of embroidered roses

A young woman sits in sharp profile against a dark olive ground, chin resting on her joined hands, a black glove still held in her fingers. She wears a black beret pushed back from her forehead and a high-necked black coat; her chestnut-gold hair is coiled in a heavy knot at the nape. Her lips are a single stroke of coral, echoed by the small red beads at her throat and by the embroidered roses — pink, coral, green-stemmed — scattered across the cream shawl draped over the chair behind her. Signed in red at the lower right, Amrita Sher-Gil, Paris, and dated 1932: a portrait of a fellow student from her École des Beaux-Arts years, painted when she was nineteen.

Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941) was born in Budapest to a Sikh aristocrat and a Hungarian opera singer, trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and returned to India in 1934 determined to paint the country's people rather than its picturesque surface. In the seven years left to her she fused the flat colour and frontal stillness of Ajanta murals and Pahari miniatures with the Post-Impressionist lessons of Gauguin and Cézanne, producing the foundation of modern Indian painting. She died in Lahore at twenty-eight; her work is declared a National Art Treasure by the Government of India and is held chiefly by the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.

Printed as a museum-grade giclée on Hahnemühle fine art paper using 12-ink archival pigment printing. Available handframed in FSC-certified wood with optional float glass, or unframed. Ships worldwide with free delivery to 30+ countries.