Fruits Seller’s Shop

The painting, a twenty-first century miniature endowed with stylistic distinction of medieval Indian art as practised around the first quarter of the nineteenth century in Mughals’ art-world, especially at their provincial seats like Oudh and Murshidabad, a brilliant piece of art, portrays a fruits-seller’s shop with two ladies buying some fruits, perhaps apples, from it. The painting has been framed in a lavish elaborate border comprising floral arabesques rendered in gold. The painting has great Mughalia touch in its eagerness for details, subdued colour tones, depth perspective, figures’ anatomical balance and modeling, features’ sharpness and skin’s transparent colour, besides symmetrically arranged parts and geometrical proportions as reveal in semi-hexagonal placing of wooden fruit-cases.

The shop, structured over fluted tapering marble columns with lotus-bases on either side, arched brackets managing the corners, and a beautifully moulded and gold-painted lintel, is a brilliant piece of medieval Rajasthani architecture the best examples of which Sawai Jai Singh’s Pink City Jaipur presented some three hundred years before. In addition, the shop has extending over it a beautiful red canopy painted in gold. With its velvet-like look it extends from under the eave over the shop’s front. The shop’s floor, as usual, is raised to some height though unlike the more often pursued practice in medieval days, it does not provide seating space for buyers, perhaps in consideration of the nature of business involved in sale-and-purchase of fruits-like commodity taking hardly any time. The shop’s floor stands covered to its outer edge with fruits’ baskets. Besides the semi-hexagonally placed wooden racks storing bananas, sweet-melons, both streaked and uni-coloured, mangoes, apples, grapes, figs among others, the shop has bunches of grapes, pine-apples, pomegranates and bananas artistically suspending from its ceiling in perfect symmetry and one alternating the other.

The empty-handed lady on the shop’s right, in gold-bordered scarlet lehanga and green odhani, both made of fine silk and printed in gold, and in footwear worked with gold-thread, is obviously the mistress of the lady opposite her with the basket in her hand. She is wearing a few ornaments but their elegance and richness make them distinct from those that the other two women are wearing. Her maid is identically attired but in much humble wears, a simple cotton lehanga with simple cotton-thread buti and ordinary zari border, and in as ordinary an odhani. The number of her ornaments is almost the same but in quality and material of which they are made they are much inferior.

The costume of the shop-owning lady is richer than those of the maid and so her ornaments but both are inferior to those of the rich buyer. Her elderly age reflects in her features and overall personality. The figures of all three ladies, especially their hands, are so gesticulated as if they are engaged in some dialogue, perhaps related to bargain for price. The shopkeeper has before her a weighing scale made of metal, a weighing device in use since ages. The Mughal Emperor Jahangir had discovered in the identically designed scale the symbol of justice and hence the motif defining the standard of his rule.

This painting, seeking to document common man's life, as prevails now, as also, as prevailed two hundred years ago, or before, represents a new idiom of Indian art. In miniature format it portrays an unconventional theme for a medieval painting – a fruit-seller's shop. With naïve simplicity but with as much clarity, it depicts the grandeur of the tradition, inherent texture of medieval society still prevailing with a changed face, and purity and flavour of life in streets or on a roadside stall. All three maidens, possessed of exceptional beauty, sharp features, gold-like glowing complexion, dreamy eyes, lustrous faces and vigorous youth, represent this medievalism.

The beautifully carved marble arch, of which this painting focuses only the central part, overlapping brilliant canopy wrought with gold, elegantly patterned eaves above – all characteristics of a 18th-19th century shop-structure, and margins on all four sides, adorned richly with uniformly laid floral arabesques rendered in gold against a deep golden background, framing the main painting, represent medieval days' grandeur. An arch – elevating a front or a door-opening, was a feature most characteristic of medieval architecture – a shop, residential building or temple. The painting portrays two female buyers – one, with a basket, the maid, and the other, empty handed, her mistress, at a fruit shop, which a woman is running. Though attired alike, and as much simply, in lehangas –long skirts, cholis – half-sleeved short blouses, and odhanis – an unstitched upper garment, the quality of costumes and style of wearing them reveal each one's class-character. As against simple printed cotton wears of the maid's, those of the mistress comprise bright gold brocaded silk. Such distinction reveals also in the quality of their shoes. The female shop keeper is neither a maid nor a maid's mistress. Despite that she owns a shop she is only a middle class woman. Correspondingly, her garments are neither as rich as those of the maid's mistress nor as ordinary as of the maid. They stand in between. Such distinction reveals also in their style of wearing odhanis. The maid's mistress has her odhani's end laid over her breasts covering them in full; the maid's, lies on the side leaving her breasts uncovered; and, the shop keeper's, carried to her other shoulder across her front but her breasts proper are not covered. In a Mughal influenced society governed by Islamic social norms, a woman of elite class was required to cover herself gracefully, while any pretension of grace on a servant's part was considered her arrogance. The fruit-selling woman, being from the common lot, also could not act like rich upper strata, nor like a maid.

Women alone figure in the painting – shop keeper and buyers, the venue is not, however, a part of the market reserved for women on the Mina bazaar pattern of the Mughal town planning. Traditionally, and as much today, women used to run vegetable and fruit shops, perhaps to free their husbands to attend cultivation and other related duties. A large variety of sweet melons, mangos and bananas, arranged in shelves, besides shop's structure and painting's overall look to include elegance which the three ladies reveal in their bearing, link it to the 19th century Avadha, as for multiple varieties of these fruits and sophisticated life-style Lucknow, Avadha's capital, was widely known. The dim light factor inside the shop is also suggestive of the pre-electrification period of the 19th century.

The shop keeper, seated on a beautiful black carpet with maroon border worked with golden thread, with several fruits-containing baskets around, is weighing pomegranates, though her buyers have yet to make up their minds as to what and how much exactly they need. Hence, the shop keeper has stopped weighing for a while. The floor inside the shop is raised, which brings the seated shop keeper in the central focus with the other ladies standing outside the shop. Such geometric principles govern the entire painting. Two large bunches of green grapes, hanging one over the other from the ceiling, comprise the central focal point on painting's apex. They are flanked on either side by alike oval shaped pineapples having golden colour contrasting grapes' green. On their right and left hang bunches of deep orange-coloured pomegranates, and on extreme right and left are bunches of yellow bananas – all arranged symmetrically revealing harmoniouscolour effect. Two multi-shelved iron stands are angularly fixed towards both sides of the rear wall. In the centre lies a stepped stand for arranging fruits in large size baskets. The fruits put on sale include mainly various kinds of mangos, sweet melons, bananas, grapes, apples, pineapples, papayas, pomegranates….

This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of ancient Indian literature. Dr Daljeet is the chief curator of the Visual Arts Gallery at the National Museum of India, New Delhi. They have both collaborated on numerous books on Indian art and culture.

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