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{{Short description|1936 painting by Amrita Sher-Gil}}
{{Infobox artwork
| title = Child Wife
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| image = Child Wife 1936.jpg
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| artist = [[Amrita Sher-Gil]]
| year = 1936
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| medium = [[Oil on canvas]]
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| height_metric = 76
| width_metric = 53
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| museum = Saraya private collection
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'''''Child Wife''''', also known as '''''Child Bride''''' (1936), is an [[oil on canvas]] painting by Hungarian-Indian artist [[Amrita Sher-Gil]] (1913 – 1941). It measures 53 × 76 cm, and belongs to the Saraya private collection.

==Composition==
''Child Wife'' is an [[oil on canvas]] painting depicting a young Indian girl sitting alone dressed in her bridal outfit.<ref name=Sundaram2010.254>Sundaram, p. 254</ref><ref name=Sundaram2010.805>Sundaram, p. 805</ref> It measures 53 × 76 cm, and belongs to the Saraya private collection.<ref name=Sundaram2010.805/>

==Background==
[[Amrita Sher-Gil]] (1913 – 1941), was a Hungarian-Indian artist. At the age of 12 years, in India, she witnessed a girl of age 13 years being married to a 50 year old man.<ref name=Bhushan2020>{{cite book |last1=Bhushan |first1=Nalini |editor1-last=Alston |editor1-first=Charlotte |editor2-last=Carpenter |editor2-first=Amber |editor3-last=Wiseman |editor3-first=Rachael |title=Portraits of Integrity: 26 Case Studies from History, Literature and Philosophy |date=2020 |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |location=London |isbn=978-1-350-04038-0 |pages=195–196 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vZ0yEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT195|language=en |chapter=19. Amrita Sher-Gil: identity and integrity as a mixed race woman artist in colonial India}}</ref> She completed ''Child Wife'' in 1936, the year after painting ''Mother India''.<ref name=Khullar2015>{{cite book |last1=Khullar |first1=Sonal |title=Worldly Affiliations: Artistic Practice, National Identity, and Modernism in India, 1930 1990 |date=2015 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-28367-1|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5o0kDQAAQBAJ&pg=PH73|language=en|chapter=2. An art of the soil: Amrita Sher-Gil (1913-1941)|page=73 }}</ref> From her home in Simla, in a letter to her friend Denise Prouteaux dated July 1937, Sher-Gil told her that the painting is "too influenced by [[Paul Gauguin|Gauguin]]. I am now getting away from his influence".<ref name=Sundaram2010.391>Sundaram, p. 391</ref>

==Interpretation==
Art historian Sonal Khullar interprets the ''Child Wife'' and ''Mother India'' as neither depicting rosy images of women, but they have a connection with [[Indian nationalism|Indian nationalist]] aspirations for [[Social reformers of India|reform in India]].<ref name=Khullar2015/> She says that Sher-Gil's paintings of 1935 to 1936 "refuse to represent India as voluptuous, colorful, sunny and superficial"... "their dark, detached, and distant subjects critique nationalism's idealization of the masses".<ref name=Khullar2015/>

==See also==
*[[List of paintings by Amrita Sher-Gil]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Bibliography==
*{{Cite book |last=Dalmia|first=Yashodhara |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Mj3mlgEACAAJ |title=Amrita Sher-Gil: A Life |date=2013 |publisher=Penguin Books |location=Gurugram |isbn=978-0-14-342026-2 |language=en}}
*{{cite book |last1=Sundaram |first1=Vivan |title=Amrita Sher-Gil: A Self-Portrait in Letters and Writings |date=2010 |publisher=Tulika Books |location=New Delhi |volume=1|pages=1–417|isbn=978-81-89487-59-1}}
*{{cite book |last1=Sundaram |first1=Vivan |title=Amrita Sher-Gil: A Self-Portrait in Letters and Writings |date=2010 |publisher=Tulika Books |location=New Delhi |volume=2|pages=418–821|isbn=978-81-89487-59-1}}

{{Amrita Sher-Gil}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Child Wife}}
[[Category:Paintings by Amrita Sher-Gil]]
[[Category:1936 paintings]]
[[Category:Oil paintings on canvas]]
[[Category:Portraits of women]]
[[Category:20th-century portraits]]
[[Category:Paintings of children]]

{{1930s-painting-stub}}

Child Wife - Revision history

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