Ladies on a Terrace

Under the balmy light reflected by a golden sky seven ladies are seated within a garden
beside a pool in the women’s section (zenana) of a royal palace. The principle ladies at the
center are either a royal lady and her servant or two royal ladies. Sitting close together and
sharing a glass of wine as well as an intimate embrace, the two ladies obviously adore one
another. They are attended by a seated female musician holding a vina (an Indian stringed
instrument) and by three servant girls holding a blue pillow, a tray containing a small wine bottle
and assorted jewelry, and a fluttering scarf, an emblem of royalty. At some distance from the
central group, another resident of the zenana, holding a small mirror and resting on a pillow, is
about to play with her caged bird. The porcelain faces, “jewel­like color, refined drawing,
extraordinary detail, superb finish and poetic mood mark it as one of the finest paintings by
Ruknuddin, Bikaner’s premier artist during the late seventeenth century.” (1) (For discussion of
the artist Ruknuddin, see cat. no. 22.)
The screened nature of unisex life in a royal palace, particularly whatever might have
transpired in the zenana, harem, or women’s quarter of a royal palace, was fertile ground for the
suggestible, premodern, male imagination. Therefore from the mid­seventeenth century
harem scenes, with overtones of lurid sexuality, became extremely popular in Indian painting.
The ‘world apart” depicted in these pictures was partly based on fact. In premodern India, high-
born Hindu women and Muslim women of almost any status lived, travelled, and amused
themselves in their own carefully guarded quarters: only a husband, father, brother or son was
allowed admittance. This artificial world usually resulted in a female society of rigid
conventionality. Yet it also resulted on occasion in the kind of girl­on­girl behavior, as depicted
here, that men loved to imagine. (2)
This picture displays figure painting of a very high order. The calm majesty of the ladies’
deportment, and the tight interlocking of one figure in space with another, recalls the formal
audience scenes, or durbars, characteristic of Mughal painting during the reign of Shah Jahan
(r. 1627­58). But the mood is much more festive.
A closely related painting, signed by the artist Ruknuddin and dated 1666, is in the
Bikaner royal collection. (3)
(1) Kossak, op. cit., pg. 64
(2) For the sociology of the harem, see
(3) Hermann Goetz, The Art and Architecture of Bikaner State (Oxford:Bruno Cassirer,
1950), fig. 83 and Mohinder Singh Randhawa and John Kenneth Galbraith, Indian
Painting (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1968), pl. 19

Inscription: Inscribed on the reverse in black ink in Rajasthani written in devanagari script: Rukam.
dı¯m. kara(?) ma¯ro ka¯m sam. 1732 am. 32 (“1” Ruknuddin this is the work of my hand samvat 1732 [a.d. 1675] page 32); also inscribed on the border of the reverse in black ink in Rajasthani written in devanagari script [in a later hand?]: two lines describing the painting and ending with the name “Nathuram”; and the numbers “29” in black pencil, “58” in red pencil, the Indic number “L35” in black ink; notated with two effaced stamps, one from the Bikaner royal collection in purple ink, the other in black ink of unknown provenance; and a doodle

none given

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Divine Pleasures: Painting from India's Rajput Courts—The Kronos Collections," June 13–September 11, 2016.