Ladies Shooting from a Pavilion
This 19th century Kota school painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art, painter’s name isn’t known.
This anonymous painter has portrayed an early morning by creating the scene and atmosphere.
It is an interesting study of ladies in a shikargah.
The sun is rising. In the left corner a pair of leopards are resting on a hillock in front of what seems a small temple.
A small animal is peeping while a chameleon suns itself and a bird chirps. The rising sun burnished the tips of the leaves with gold.
Three ladies sitting in a shikargah out of which two are aiming at the pair of lions which have come to drink in the pond in front of the pavilion.
The shikargah is either on the edge of or in the middle of a pond where lotus are blooming and a pair of cranes are sitting. Ducks can be seen.
A shivling and Nandi bull can be seen near the shikar ah.
However, one lion ( the male?) has been alarmed because the deer are alarmed and the monkey on the top of the pavilion is trying to jump to the safety of a mango tree. These animals have seen the ladies.
Why did the lion not see what’s right in front of him? Is there a dip in the pond which hides the ladies from it’s gaze?
Plenty of Birds can be seen in the foreground .
The peacock seems unconcerned about everything and is preening itself.
In the bushes on the left side below the pavilion the mongoose , which has just caught a bird, is trying to slink away.
A pair of wild boar in the right corner complete the scene.
