Holi

The festival of colours is celebrated all over India on the full moon or the fifteenth day of the bright half of the month of Phalguna (March–April), in jubilation of the advent of the spring season. It is also the season of love and romance and the earth is filled with colourful flowers and leaves.

The ladies, normally confined to the zenana, also get an opportunity to mingle with the familiar crowd and participate in the celebration. The painting is a depiction of two Mewar ladies enjoying this moment. Painted in Nim qalam, it is lightly tinted in red in a few places only to indicate the spray of colours. Their exaggerated body postures denote their playful movements.

It is a line drawing with the details of the costumes and ornaments accentuated in colours. On the left, a women wearing an odhni, pairhan, trousers and ornaments stands with a bag of red powder tied to her waist. She is taking out the powder with her right hand, while with her left hand she is holding her odhni. On the right another woman wearing the same costume is throwing coloured water on the former with a syringe with its nozzle shaped like an elephant's head. Flowering plants in background.