A Burmese Beauty
A skirt or longyis is topped by a loosely fitted long sleeve shirt and the lady wears two necklaces, one a choker and another a longer one.
Nautch Girls
Gohar Jaan
The former Angelina Yeoward (1873-1930) became one of the most famous singers in India, and one of its first gramophone-recorded artists.
Jaipur Woman
This image of a reclining woman was one of the most popular postcards by the leading early Jaipur photographer and postcard publisher, Gobindram Oodeyram, and was also printed with the title Sleeping Hindu Woman.
Although the image dates from the
Miss Benzir of Allahabad
The Urdu text and number suggests that this postcard was made from what was originally a carte-des-visite. Joachim Bautze in his essay Umrao Jan Ada: Her carte-de-visite describes how this form of identification on images was a common practice among
Natch Ghar (Dancing place) (Ambala)
A dance hall in an important railway junction and cantonment made famous in Rudyard Kipling's novel Kim. This hall, from the title, possibly featured dancing or "nautch" girls, or it might have been a dance hall where British soldiers held dances
Tanjore dancing girl
Among the first series of postcards printed in India by The Ravi Varma Press, this lithograph by the German artist at the Press, Paul Gerhardt, shows how in these very early days, placing the title was not quite fixed by convention, It could easily
Goan Beauty
Most likely a dancer given her anklets, Goa, as a Portuguese Colony, was not well-represented in British Indian postcards.
A Benares Dancing Girl
This card, sent by a Mr. Seamus on Dec. 1, 1905 from Kolkata, has a stamp positioned in the top that extends the tilt of the woman's head.
Rukmoni - The Famous Madras Beauty - Rangoon
To be a named "beauty" on a postcard was quite an honor at the turn of the century. Rukmoni is shown here in a studio with colorized backdrop.
Kashmir beauty
An unusual coloured collotype by Kashmir's premiere postcard publisher. The pink seems to billow both outward from the frame and upward to the woman's face.
