The Heroine Who Waits Anxiously for Her Absent Lover: Utka Nayika (c. 1760–65): Art, History and Details

The Heroine Who Waits Anxiously for Her Absent Lover: Utka Nayika (c. 1760–65) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

In the hilly and verdant landscape all around her, birds and animals are all in pairs—even many of the trees have doubles—but she remains alone, waiting on a bed of leaves for her lover to arrive. She has no way of knowing when he will come, like the devotee has no way to know when god will arrive and bring salvation and bliss.

Object facts

• Title: The Heroine Who Waits Anxiously for Her Absent Lover: Utka Nayika
• Date: c. 1760–65
• Culture: Northern India, Pahari kingdoms
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Page: 26.3 x 17.8 cm (10 3/8 x 7 in.); Image: 25.2 x 16.6 cm (9 15/16 x 6 9/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 2018.114

A detail from the museum

The wildlife has been depicted in pairs to highlight the nayika’s loneliness.

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.
• Cameron, Ainsley M. “Considering Painting from the Pahari Kingdoms through Sight, Sound, Smell and Touch.” Arts of Asia, (Spring 2026): 79-91.

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.