Ladies in a courtyard with a parrot - 18th century
Opaque watercolour and gold on paper

The painting shows a young lady seated on the floor within a small decorative pavilion inside an enclosed courtyard. She is looking over her shoulder towards an orange and green parrot on a perch while a female attendant kneels outside pointing towards two other ladies on the right hand side of the picture. No attempt has been made to give any impression of receding perspective The lower part of the painting consists of a tripartite depiction of two cartouche-shaped flower beds either side of a cusped-shaped pond and fountain within rectilinear white borders. The flowers are a mixture of single and double poppies in red, purple and white. Above, a green-tiled courtyard is enclosed by a terra cotta-coloured wall with a decorative floral frieze in shaped arches, echoed in the parapet of the pavilion. A doorway in the wall leads one's eye to two trees in full leaf with a pink flowering one behind, set against a grey-blue sky and wispy clouds.

The ladies all wear tight short-sleeved cholis displaying bare midriffs above ghaghras, into the waistbands of which are tucked gold-edged and spotted, transparent saris, which are bunched up in folds at the front, wrapped round their skirts and up round their upper bodies and over their heads.

The principal lady rests her right arm along the top of a large bolster against which she is kneeling on a yellow-ground floor cloth placed on top of a red carpet with a floral design. The back wall of the pavilion is white with the lower panels decorated with branching flowering plants in gold above which are two tiers of niches outlined in gold supporting a variety of vases. In the centre there is a blank doorway, over which there is an orange blind with a green border. The front of the pavilion rests on two golden columns with lotus-blossom bases and capitals that supports a cusped ogival-shaped arch decorated with pink and red flowers on a gold ground.

The painting is framed with a dark-blue inner border decorated with a stylised foliate scroll in gold outlined on both sides in white with additional gold lines and an outer outline in blue. The ivory-coloured outer border to the page is decorated with a row of alternate lilies and poppies outlined in gold. The margins of the page have strips of buff-coloured paper with an inner outline in white and a darker strip applied as a gutter for the binding.

Copyright: © V&A Images