Child Wife

Child Wife
Artist	Amrita Sher-Gil
Year	1936
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	76 cm × 53 cm (30 in × 21 in)
Location	Saraya private collection

Child Wife, also known as Child Bride (1936), is an oil on canvas painting by Hungarian-Indian artist Amrita Sher-Gil (1913 – 1941). It measures 53 × 76 cm, and belongs to the Saraya private collection.

Composition

Child Wife is an oil on canvas painting depicting a young Indian girl sitting alone dressed in her bridal outfit.[1][2] It measures 53 × 76 cm, and belongs to the Saraya private collection.[2]

Background

Amrita Sher-Gil (1913 – 1941), was a Hungarian-Indian artist. At the age of 12 years, in India, she witnessed a girl of age 13 years being married to a 50 year old man.[3] She completed Child Wife in 1936, the year after painting Mother India.[4] From her home in Simla, in a letter to her friend Denise Prouteaux dated July 1937, Sher-Gil told her that the painting is "too influenced by Gauguin. I am now getting away from his influence".[5]

Interpretation

Art historian Sonal Khullar interprets the Child Wife and Mother India as neither depicting rosy images of women, but they have a connection with Indian nationalist aspirations for reform in India.[4] She says that Sher-Gil's paintings of 1935 to 1936 "refuse to represent India as voluptuous, colorful, sunny and superficial"... "their dark, detached, and distant subjects critique nationalism's idealization of the masses".[4]

See also

• List of paintings by Amrita Sher-Gil

References

1. Sundaram, p. 254
2. Sundaram, p. 805
3. Bhushan, Nalini (2020). "19. Amrita Sher-Gil: identity and integrity as a mixed race woman artist in colonial India". In Alston, Charlotte; Carpenter, Amber; Wiseman, Rachael (eds.). Portraits of Integrity: 26 Case Studies from History, Literature and Philosophy. London: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 195–196. ISBN 978-1-350-04038-0.
4. Khullar, Sonal (2015). "2. An art of the soil: Amrita Sher-Gil (1913-1941)". Worldly Affiliations: Artistic Practice, National Identity, and Modernism in India, 1930 1990. University of California Press. p. 73. ISBN 978-0-520-28367-1.
5. Sundaram, p. 391

Bibliography

• Dalmia, Yashodhara (2013). Amrita Sher-Gil: A Life. Gurugram: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-342026-2.
• Sundaram, Vivan (2010). Amrita Sher-Gil: A Self-Portrait in Letters and Writings. Vol. 1. New Delhi: Tulika Books. pp. 1–417. ISBN 978-81-89487-59-1.
• Sundaram, Vivan (2010). Amrita Sher-Gil: A Self-Portrait in Letters and Writings. Vol. 2. New Delhi: Tulika Books. pp. 418–821. ISBN 978-81-89487-59-1.