Three turbaned musicians with a tanpura, a drum and a garland of red flowers

Three musicians in white turbans and white shirts fill the canvas against a dark green ground. The foremost, dark-bearded, cradles a large rosewood tanpura across his body, a garland of orange-red flowers looped over his shoulder; behind him a drummer in a black waistcoat rests his hands on a dholak bound with cord, and a third man with a red face and black beard watches from between them. A red patterned rug runs beneath the instruments. Painted at Saraya in 1940, it is one of the last of Sher-Gil's Indian subjects and among the most monumental — the figures pushed to the edges of the frame, the instruments given the weight of sculpture.

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.