A veiled woman sits on a terrace, one arm raised against the wall

A woman in a pale grey-green veil and cream blouse sits against a terracotta-red wall, her knees drawn up in dark indigo trousers, one arm raised straight against the wall and the other resting on her knee, bare feet tucked beneath her. Her downcast profile is turned to the right. In the upper corner, on the grey terrace beyond, a tiny vignette of village life — a standing woman in white, a seated child, a black dog and yellow foliage — is sketched in lighter touches. Painted at Amritsar in 1935 (signed lower right), a year after Sher-Gil's return to India, it shows the monumental stillness she was learning to give to ordinary women.

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.