Commemoration of Muharram

Gallery 329, Asian Art, third floor (Lahiri Gallery)

Main Building

Commemoration of Muharram

Early to mid- 19th century

Artist/maker unknown, Indian

In the late eighteenth century, Bengali artists began producing sets of paintings on thin, flexible sheets of mica for the burgeoning colonial tourist market. Local festivals were an especially popular subject, as this painting illustrates. The commemoration of Muharram is a month-long period of mourning for the Prophet Muhammad's martyred grandson, Husayn Ibn 'Ali. By representing impassioned ritual events in such a quaint manner and on such a small scale, artists may have been trying to make Bengal's unfamiliar cultural terrain more palatable for European patrons.

Gallery 329, Asian Art, third floor (Lahiri Gallery)

Object Details

Title:

Commemoration of Muharram

Date:

Early to mid- 19th century

Artist:

Artist/maker unknown, Indian

Medium:

Opaque watercolor on mica

Dimensions:

Sheet: 6 3/4 × 8 1/2 inches (17.1 × 21.6 cm)

Classification:

Paintings

Credit Line:

Gift of Margaret Janvier Hort, 1969

Accession Number:

1969-92-2

Geography:

Made in Patna, Bihar, India, Asia

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Gallery 329, Asian Art, third floor (Lahiri Gallery)

Main Building

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