Harem night-bathing scene, from the Late Shah Jahan Album (recto) (c. 1653): Art, History and Details

Harem night-bathing scene, from the Late Shah Jahan Album (recto) (c. 1653) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

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.

Object facts

• Title: Harem night-bathing scene, from the Late Shah Jahan Album (recto)
• Date: c. 1653
• Culture: Mughal India, court of Shah Jahan (reigned 1628–58)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera, gold, and ink on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 37.8 x 27.3 cm (14 7/8 x 10 3/4 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1987.153.a

A detail from the museum

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.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alton W. Whitehouse

Further reading listed by the museum

• 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.

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.