A brightly coloured watercolour of four women selling food-grains, vegetables and fruit, in baskets, with purple and gold-flecked fawn borders, with white and red rules - 1850
By Shiva Dayal Lal ( born 1815 - died 1884)

The pictures made by Indian artists for the British in India are called Company paintings. The artist Shiva Dayal Lal, who worked in Patna, created this one around 1850. He relied to a great extent on patronage from the local gentry, especially Rai Sultan Bahadur, for whom he made bird and flower paintings. His cousin, Shiva Lal, also ran an artist's shop in Patna, but his work tends to be less brightly coloured and precise in style.

Source: V&A, London