Princess smoking a hookah (c. 1760): Art, History and Details

Princess smoking a hookah (c. 1760) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

A lady seated at window smokes a hookah. She wears a translucent lilac blouse and gold trousers and adorns herself with jewelry comprising pearls, gold, and emeralds. Reclining against a large bolster, she is engrossed in smoking her hookah made of gold and porcelain. The painting may have been intended to be presented to the king by the artist.

Object facts

• Title: Princess smoking a hookah
• Date: c. 1760
• Culture: Northern India, Pahari kingdoms
• Type: Painting
• Technique: gum tempera, ink, gold, and beetle-wing carapaces on paper
• Dimensions: Page: 32.1 x 25.3 cm (12 5/8 x 9 15/16 in.); Image: 24.1 x 16 cm (9 1/2 x 6 5/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 2018.106

A detail from the museum

The artist has used beetle wings for emeralds in the jewelry.

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.

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.