A bride in scarlet waits beneath her sequinned veil

A young bride sits against a mottled olive-green ground, wrapped from head to knee in scarlet — a sheer, sequin-scattered veil drawn over a gold-edged headdress, a nose ring, and a heavy dark bangle at her wrist. Her pale hands rest quietly in her lap and her eyes turn down and away, the whole figure composed into a single triangle of red. Painted at Saraya in 1940, it belongs to the last village pictures in which Sher-Gil condensed ceremony into colour and stillness.

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.