The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 19, 2025

Vertically oriented album page with a central image of eight women standing next to and bathing in water, all with medium-light skin tones and wearing only a white wrap around their waists. A tree grows in the center, from the white platforms under a full moon, a person stepping into a wooden building at the upper right. Around the border, women adorn themselves with jewelry and carry containers, gold flowers detailing the brown paper.

Harem night-bathing scene, from the Late Shah Jahan Album (recto)

c. 1653

Mughal India, court of Shah Jahan

(reigned 1628–58)
Gum tempera, gold, and ink on paper
Overall: 37.8 x 27.3 cm (14 7/8 x 10 3/4 in.)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alton W. Whitehouse 1987.153.a
Location: 242B Indian Painting

Did You Know?

The fully dressed women in the top and bottom border examine strings of pearls and other jewelry pieces while the attendants on the side bring perfumes and containers probably with other jewels for inspection.

Description

The subject of women bathing persisted throughout the 1500s and into the 1600s. Akbar’s grandson Shah Jahan—the Mughal emperor who built the Taj Mahal—continued to support the work of artists in the imperial atelier. His taste was more formal and subdued, without as much interest in illuminations of fantastic tales. This scene is a single painting mounted in an album. The white marble terraces glow under the moonlight. An attendant carrying a cloth over one arm looks on with awe at the beauty of the scene. He is probably a eunuch, since men were not permitted to serve in the women’s quarters of a Mughal palace.
  • 1987–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Tōyō kaiga no seika: tokubetsuten: Kurīvurando Bijutsukan no korekushon kara [東洋絵画の精華: 特别展: クリーヴラント美術館のコレクションから= Highlights of Asian painting from the Cleveland Museum of Art]. Nara, Japan: Nara National Museum, 1998. Reproduced: p. 26, cat. no. 5
  • Indian Painting of the 1500s: Continuities and Transformations. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 15, 2025-January 11, 2026).
    Main Gallery Rotation (gallery 245). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (April 28–November 2, 2015).
  • {{cite web|title=Harem night-bathing scene, from the Late Shah Jahan Album (recto)|url=false|author=|year=c. 1653|access-date=19 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1987.153.a