Embedded Files
This section brings together paintings, photographs, prints, and illustrated manuscripts depicting performers and performance spaces. Visual materials are treated as historical evidence—revealing aesthetics, patronage, and social positioning—while also reflecting the gaze of courts, colonial observers, and emerging publics. Attention is paid to what these images emphasize, omit, or stylize in the representation of gender, labor, and intimacy.
An engraving by Poisson after a painting by Sonnerat, showing the Festival of ‘Teroton’.
A hand-colored engraving by Poisson, after an original painting by Sonnerat, depicting dancers and musicians in a wedding procession.
From the British Museum. Detail of Simpson’s model chariot showing Vaishnavite dancers, nattuvanar and musicians.
From the Victoria & Albert Museum. An early company painting showing a Vaishnavite procession with musicians and a single dancer.
From the British Museum, circa 1830. A crowded procession with palanquin, and musicians and dancers visible among the crowd in the centre of the illustration.
Victoria & Albert Museum: Another Vaishnavaite procession with musicians and two dancers dressed in golden-yellow garments. This painting echoes the elements seen above in figure 4.
From the private collection of Madhurakkaran Karthikeyan: A devadasi dancing publicly during a Chitirai Thiruvizha procession in Madurai. Circa 1910-1915.
From the private collection of Madhurakkaran Karthikeyan
Three devadasis stand before an elaborately carved rathotsava chariot, wearing silk saris, layered jewelry, and flowers in their hair. Their poised stances and serious expressions suggest ritual dignity. The sepia-toned postcard captures temple sculpture, textile textures, and early photography aesthetics, evoking ceremonial life, gendered labor, and sacred performance in colonial-era South India during public festivals and processions linked to temples.
From the Victoria & Albert Museum: A selection of company paintings showing various Shaivite processional festivals with a single dancer and musicians present in each.
From an unknown postcard vendor: A temple chariot with four dancers, possibly from the temple of Villianur near Pondicherry.
Unknown photographer, showing devadasis and attendants at the Kameeswarar Temple of Villianur.
From an unknown postcard vendor, showing a wooden doll attached to a temple chariot and representing an absent devadasi.
Devdasis in 1920s
A painting by Georgian Bayaderes
Antique illustration of Devadasi. Engraving published in Systematischer Bilder-Atlas zum Conversations-Lexikon, Ikonographische Encyklopaedie der Wissenschaften und Kuenste (Brockhaus, Leipzig) in 1875.
A photograph taken by Marcus B. Fuller depicting an elderly woman who may have been a devadasi.
A photograph taken by Marcus B fuller showcasing an archaic Hindu temple where temple dancers cease to exist.
"NAUTCH GIRLS"
A photograph take by Marcus B. Fuller depicting Nautch girls.
A photograph taken by Marcus B. Fuller of a Hindu temple.
Note: All paintings and photographs are presented solely for archival and educational purposes, as a space to preserve their histories and contexts. Their inclusion does not imply authorship or claim of artistic credit.
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