Artwork Page for The Heroine Who Waits Anxiously for Her Absent Lover: Utka Nayika

Details / Information for The Heroine Who Waits Anxiously for Her Absent Lover: Utka Nayika

The Heroine Who Waits Anxiously for Her Absent Lover: Utka Nayika

c. 1760–65

Northern India, Pahari kingdoms

Medium
Gum tempera and gold on paper
Measurements
Page: 26.3 x 17.8 cm (10 3/8 x 7 in.); Image: 25.2 x 16.6 cm (9 15/16 x 6 9/16 in.)
Credit Line
Purchase and partial gift from the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection; Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund 2018.114
Public Domain
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Location
Not on view
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Did You Know?

The wildlife has been depicted in pairs to highlight the nayika’s loneliness.

Description

In the hilly and verdant landscape all around her, birds and animals are all in pairs—even many of the trees have doubles—but she remains alone, waiting on a bed of leaves for her lover to arrive. She has no way of knowing when he will come, like the devotee has no way to know when god will arrive and bring salvation and bliss.
A vertically oriented tempera painting depicts a woman with light skin tone seated on a bed of leaves in the center of a wilderness, her orange skirt and pink hair covering contrasting with the muted green wilderness, gray-blue water behind her, and gray-blue sky above the trees in the background. She sits, her left knee bent up, right folded under her, twisting her body and pulling up her hair covering to look to her left.

The Heroine Who Waits Anxiously for Her Absent Lover: Utka Nayika

c. 1760–65

Northern India, Pahari kingdoms

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