Flower Seller

The short bangs of this flower vendor indicate that she is a teenage girl, while her headgear and clothing suggest that she represents a villager from Kashmir, a region now divided between India and Pakistan. Chughtai produced at least one other painting of a Kashmiri girl selling flowers. These young women are among the many idealized images of people Chughtai encountered in his homeland and during his travels. As the artist was fond of visual metaphors, it is not unlikely that he intended this young woman with her baskets full of flowers to represent the legendary beauty and abundance of Kashmir. Chughtai's own writings indicate that he felt a great compassion for Kashmiris, whose lives were bitterly disrupted by disputes over political control in the region.