Amrita Shergil was born on 30 January 1913 in Budapest, Hungary, as the eldest daughter of Umrao Singh Shergil, a Sikh aristocrat and Sanskrit scholar and Marie Antoinette Gottesmann, a Hungarian singer. She spent her early childhood in Hungary, but her family shifted to Shimla, India in 1921. Recognising her talent for painting, her mother took her to Italy and later to France where she studied at the best art school in Paris, the Ecole des Beaux Arts, under eminent masters. Living in Paris, she had the advantage of visiting famous art galleries and studying the work of great painters in the original. In 1934, she returned to India, obeying an inner compulsion to explore and understand her Indian heritage and discover her artistic destiny. She settled down in Shimla, where she was moved powerfully by the sadness, resignation, dejection and despair that she saw in the faces of the Indians, especially the women and decided to interpret ‘the life of Indians, particularly the poor, pictorially’. Amrita Shergil focuses mainly on women – thin, emaciated, starving women with no joy in their eyes. A mood of sorrow prevails in her paintings. Amrita Shergil was influenced by the Mughal and Pahari School of paintings. Her paintings show a remarkable blend of the Western and Indian styles of painting. Her appreciation of Indian painting and sculpture took her on a tour of south India in 1937. In 1938 she married her cousin Dr. Victor Egan and settled down in Lahore after a brief stay at Shimla. She died suddenly at the young age of 28 on Dec 5, 1941. She was one of the most gifted artists belonging to the pre-Independence era who tried to explore the life of the ordinary, rustic poor and invest them with a color and beauty that was absent in their lives. Trained in Western artistic tradition, and fascinated by Indian miniature art and sculptures and inspired by Indian themes, she evolved her own unique style of painting. Her works have been declared as National Art Treasures by the Government of India and most of her paintings are on display in the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi.

Her Paintings
Young Girls – Painted in 1932, this oil on canvas painting depicts two young girls one of whom is Amrita’s sister Indira who sits on the left wearing western clothes while the other figure is a French friend, Denise Proutaux. This painting impressed the critics so much that she was elected as an associate of the Grand Salon in Paris. She was the youngest and the only Asian to win this honour.

Bride’s Toilet – This oil on canvas painting done in 1937 depicts a group of women helping the bride to get ready. The scene is vivid but the mood is melancholy.