A young woman awakened by her lover

Romantic encounters are common subjects in South Asian paintings. They range from formal scenes of intimacy-like the one depicted at right-to frankly explicit images of lovemaking. This suggestive painting lies somewhere between the two extremes.

Men and women are almost always rendered as idealized stock figures in such romantic or erotic paintings. This is a reflection of the artists' lack of access to elite women's quarters and of the general function of such paintings as visual amusements. In some instances, men can be identified by their portrait features, suggesting that another goal of these works was to emphasize masculine power.

This painting belonged to Warren Hastings (1732-1818), the first British governor-general of India. Thirty-five years after Hastings's death, the album containing this work was purchased by Sir Thomas Phillips. Phillips's famous private collection-known as the Bibliotheca Phillippica-consisted of some one hundred thousand manuscripts, albums, and printed books; it has been dispersed over the past century.