This painting brings together, on one canvas, a tableau of eleven women, from different regions and communities of India, playing various musical instruments. Arranged like a group photograph, the painting offers a dazzling range from the Muslim courtesan on the right to the Nair lady playing the veena, on the left, including also the Parsi and the Anglo-Indian among the array of Tamil, Maratha and Rajput types. What first arrests the eye here are the rich colors, plushness and intricacy of the varieties of costume and ornaments. Then the eye moves to the glowing faces, to the play of inward-looking interlocking glances of the group of women that seal them off from the spectator's gaze and contain them with an imagined rarefied space of the 'nation.' The artist has conjured through his art a pan-Indian ethos, depicting the oriental and nationalist vision of India, resplendently traditional yet undeniably modern.
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