Richard Stoneman, 'The Greek Experience of India: from Alexander to the Indo-Greeks', 2019:
"...to my eye the paintings at Ajanta could have been made by a Greek (Macedonian) observing intently the Indian life around him. At present it seems impossible to do more than speculate, but the fact that wall-painting in India begins at a time when Greeks were dominant in the north-west of the country, and among Buddhists, with whom Greeks seem to have close relations, does suggest more than coincidence with regard to the origin of this Indian art."
“The pigments used at Ajanta are all derived from local materials, whether earths or plants, plus lamp black. Blue, orange, brown, green and purple are the most common colours in the later Ajanta murals. The earliest ones also use considerable quantities of white (from roots of Ipomoea digitata, with occasional substitutes, or from lime and gypsum), but in these the other colours have been much darkened, and are hard to study in the half-dark of the caves: reds, yellows, and browns are visible, as well as blues, so darkened now as to look black. Aided by some restoration in the last decade or so, vivid faces loom from the darkness, often topped by the voluminous turbans so typical of Maurya and Śunga figures, and shown in three-quarter profile like many of the faces in Macedonian tombs.”
"Woman with Lotus" is one of the many paintings Srimati produced throughout her career that celebrated feminine beauty. One of her most daring works in this genre, this painting's large scale demanded an absolute sureness of line and subtle manipulation of large areas of color washes.
Y. G. Srimati (Indian, 1926–2007). Woman with Lotus, 1951. 22 1/2 × 15 1/4 in. (57.2 × 38.7 cm). © 1968 M. Pellettieri.
