A House Burgled at Night (c. 1700): Art, History and Details

A House Burgled at Night (c. 1700) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In this night scene a band of robbers have climbed over the walls of a Mughal house and, from a courtyard, are successfully carrying out the possessions of its owners while a lady flees through the door. The speed of her movement is expressed in the swinging motion of her diaphanous skirt and the scarf clutched in her hand, as well as by the shoes abandoned on the ground in her haste. This depiction of unruly behavior and its effects are perhaps an expression of the violent succession of emperors that threw the Mughal court into distress at the beginning of the 18th century.

Object facts

• Title: A House Burgled at Night
• Date: c. 1700
• Culture: Mughal India
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Page: 38.7 x 28.7 cm (15 1/4 x 11 5/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art - Mughal
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 2013.333

Collection credit

Gift in honor of Madeline Neves Clapp; Gift of Mrs. Henry White Cannon by exchange; Bequest of Louise T. Cooper; Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund; From the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.