Krishna celebrates Holi (c. 1770): Art, History and Details

Krishna celebrates Holi (c. 1770) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

During the festival of Holi, Hindus celebrate the coming of spring by playfully throwing and shooting colored water and powders at one another. Among all the cowherd boys with whom he grew up, Krishna, a Hindu god incarnated on earth, is the only one able to reach the heart of a gopi, or milkmaid, with a well-aimed plunger full of colors. Raucous with sound as well as color, some of the boys play the drum, flute, and horns; girls strum a vina (stringed instrument), play a flute, and blow a whistle.

Object facts

• Title: Krishna celebrates Holi
• Date: c. 1770
• Culture: Northern India, Pahari kingdoms
• Type: Painting
• Technique: gum tempera, gold, and silver on paper
• Dimensions: Page: 21 x 29.4 cm (8 1/4 x 11 9/16 in.); Image: 15.5 x 23.8 cm (6 1/8 x 9 3/8 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 2018.104

A detail from the museum

The painter has sprinkled color on the background to suggest colors thrown in the air.

Collection credit

Purchase and partial gift from the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection; Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Griswold, William, Cameron Kitchin, Chase F. Robinson, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cincinnati Art Museum, and National Museum of Asian Art (Smithsonian Institution). Pahari Paintings: Art and Stories, edited by Sonya Rhie Mace, Sarang Sharma, and Vijay Sharma. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2026.
• “Agenda: Moving Mountains.” Apollo 203, n. 749 (February 2026): 18.

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.