Augury of the crow (Vasakasajja Nayika) (c. 1800): Art, History and Details

Augury of the crow (Vasakasajja Nayika) (c. 1800) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The heroine in the doorway waits for her husband to return, but he is delayed, and ominous monsoon clouds gather in the distance. The pomegranate tree in her garden has ripe fruits full of seeds and bright red juices, suggestive of her fertility, but a crow is perched in the branches. The sound of a crow’s voice is an unlucky omen, and this further elevates her anxiety. A king of Kangra owned this painting, and the buildings of one of Kangra’s forts sits in the distance. In this way, the artist has brought an image known from classical poetry to a recognizable locale.

Object facts

• Title: Augury of the crow (Vasakasajja Nayika)
• Date: c. 1800
• Culture: Northern India, Pahari kingdoms
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 21.4 x 14.5 cm (8 7/16 x 5 11/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1989.337

A detail from the museum

Nayika is the term for a heroine figure in Indian art, literature, and drama.

Collection credit

Bequest of Mrs. Severance A. Millikin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Randhawa, M. S. Kangra Paintings on Love. New Delhi: National Museum, 1962.
• Catalogue of the Severance and Greta Millikin Collection. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1990.

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.