Shoe Maker

This is a hand-painted postcard from around 1905, rather rare in India compared to, say, China where at the time numerous hand-painted postcards were being sent abroad. In India a water colour-based tradition of individually hand painted cards emerged, with a style reminiscent of Company Painting and other traditional painting forms, never that far removed from the postcard either (Nathdwara painting made it on to Brij Basi postcards by 1930 for example). In any case, these individual works can often have great sophistication, may or may not have a lightly pencilled in title just like Company paintings did, and are hard to find genuine examples of (the tradition of painting on old, used bazaar postcards, is very much alive and still results in splendid "counterfeit" works or not).