The Morning Toilette (1810–25): Art, History and Details

The Morning Toilette (1810–25) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

A lady, dressed in white below the waist, admires herself in a mirror held by a handmaiden. Three other ladies attend to her toilette. She stands on a large wooden stool and raises her elbow high to adjust her earrings, providing the beholder with a glimpse of her round breasts. Ewers and water pots can be seen in the foreground.

Object facts

• Title: The Morning Toilette
• Date: 1810–25
• Culture: Northern India, Pahari kingdoms
• Type: Painting
• Technique: gum tempera and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Page: 26.5 x 18.6 cm (10 7/16 x 7 5/16 in.); Image: 22.1 x 13.8 cm (8 11/16 x 5 7/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 2018.115

A detail from the museum

The costume of the handmaiden holding the mirror is inspired by older Chamba paintings.

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.