This postcard actually shows a young Gohar Jan (right) and her mother Malka Jan, both famous dancers and singers. Gohar Jan was the first recorded Indian artist, by the Gramophone company in 1904. She can be heard on YouTube.
This image was used
The Kolam tradition of creating complex geometric patterns, often passed down from mother to daughter, out of rice flour or chalk in front of the home is an ancient tradition in South India and elsewhere.
The bicycle was something quite new in Bombay at the turn of the century, and often featured on postcards, frequently with women as drivers.
This so-called "chromo-collotype" card was created by running an image derived from a black and white photograph through multiple color runs, after each color had dried, creating rich and translucent images.
Nicolas Brothers opened a studio in Calicut [Kozhikode], a coastal city in Kerala State as early as the 1860s. The rounded top of this image suggests that it was originally an albumen photograph. The firm, which also became Nicolas & Co., thrived
Andree, known for some striking postcard images, may have been Adolphus Williams, Jr. a photographer on York Street in Colombo.
Smiles on postcards from the early 1900s are rather rare, possibly because most portraits required the sitter to stay still for many seconds while the exposure was made, especially in the 19th century when most portraits were struck and re-purposed
In Hinduism, Durga is a form of Devi, the supreme goddess. Durga is depicted as a warrior woman riding a lion or a tiger with multiple hands carrying weapons and assuming mudras, or symbolic hand gestures.
Hindu woman wearing a white sari. Getting the shades and printing correct, especially the white, on this card would have required great skill, and apparently was done by the leading early German postcard printer Knackstedt and Roder.
Note the title, which attempts to justify the nude image as some sort of ethnographic study.
