Adapting the Eye: an archive of the British in India, 1770-1830 (Yale Center for British Art, 2011-10-11 - 2011-12-31)India's Fabled City - The Art of Courtly Lucknow (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2010-12-12 - 2011-02-27)India's Fabled City - The Art of Courtly Lucknow (Musee National of Asian Art Guimet, 2011-04-06 - 2011-07-11)The Raj - India and the British 1600 - 1947 (National Portrait Gallery, 1990-10-19 - 1991-03-17)The Splendours of Princely India (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1985-11 - 1986-02-23)
Publications:
Mildred Archer, India and British Portraiture, 1770-1825, Sotheby Parke Bernet, London, 1979, pp. 79, 457, 492, pl. I, fig. 31, ND 1327 I44 A72 (YCBA)Mildred Archer, Tilly Kettle and the court of Oudh (1772-73), Apollo, vol. 95, no. 1, February 1972, p. 98, fig. 4, N1 A54 + OVERSIZE (YCBA)C. A. Bayly, The Raj, India and the British, 1600-1947 , National Portrait Gallery, London, 1990, pp. 116-7, cat. no. 137, DS428 R25 1990 (YCBA)Nandini Bhattacharya, Reading the splendid body, Gender and consumerism in eighteenth-century British writing on India , Associated University Presses, Inc., Newark, 1998, p. 144, PR129 I5 B49 1998 (YCBA)John Cooper, Imperial Balls : The Arts of Sex, War, and Dancing in India, England, and the Caribbean, 1770-1870 [PhD Dissertation, Yale University ], New Haven, CT, 2015, pp. 68, 77-78, 1.19, Available Online : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses GlobalMalcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp.134-135, N590.2 .A83 (YCBA)Stephen Markel, India's fabled city, the art of courtly Lucknow , Prestel, Munich New York, 2010, pp. 46, 48 261, no. 188, n. 188, N7308 L83 M37 2010 + (YCBA)John McAleer, Picturing India People, Places, and the World of the East India Company, The British Library, London, p. 147, fig. 4.8, N8214.5.I5 M43 2017 (YCBA)Pran Nevile, Beyond the veil, Indian women in the Raj , Nevile Books, New Delhi, 2000, p. 99, fig. 62, DS422 W8 N48 2000 (YCBA)Pran Nevile, The Raj revisited, Niyogi Books, New Delhi, 2012, p. 12, N8214.5.I5 N48 2012 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Holly Shaffer, Adapting the eye, An archive of the British in India, 1770-1830 , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2011, p. 18, 30, no. 78, V2359 (YCBA)Robin Simon, The portrait in Britain and America, with a biographical dictionary of portrait painters 1680-1914 , Phaidon Press, Oxford, 1987, p. 201, fig. 164, ND1314 S46 (YCBA)Ellis Waterhouse, Dictionary of British 18th Century Painters in Oils and Crayons, Antique Collectors' Club, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1981, pp. 204-5, ND466 +.W38 Oversize (YCBA)Stuart Cary Welch, The British view of India, selected English paintings from the Paul Mellon collection , American Federation of Arts, New York, 1978, N8214.5 I5 B75 1978 (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
This painting likely represents a woman of the court of Faizabad, where the London-born artist Tilly Kettle came at the invitation of Shuja ud-Daula, nawab of Oudh (d. 1775), the year this painting was made. Although the woman's identity is now unknown, her pose and clothing are consistent with those of women who performed the "nautch" dance to court elites and East India Company officials. --- The painting has been cut down on three sides. The original composition probably accommodated a male figure to the left, to whom the woman offers the hookah pipe. The canvas shows signs of having been rolled up, presumably when Kettle returned to London from India. This makes it likely to be a "whole-length portrait of a Gentoo woman in full dress with a hooker," which was sold from Kettle's home following his bankruptcy in 1783. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2021