Sher-Gil painted 'Young Girls' in 1933 while studying in Paris, later earning her recognition at the Grand Salon.
In 1933, while still a student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Amrita Sher-Gil completed 'Young Girls', a striking oil painting depicting two women—one Western and clothed, one Eastern and semi-nude—seated together. The work drew heavily on the influence of Post-Impressionist masters like Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin, whom she deeply admired during her Parisian training.
The painting earned her recognition and, in 1933, she was elected an Associate of the Grand Salon in Paris—an extraordinary honor for a young woman still in her early twenties, and virtually unprecedented for an Indian artist. This made her the youngest ever and the only Asian to receive this distinction at the time.
The exact date of composition within 1933 is not precisely documented beyond the year, but the achievement itself marked a pivotal moment: it announced Sher-Gil as a serious talent within the European art establishment before she had even returned to India to develop her mature, distinctly Indian style. It set the stage for her later works that would fuse European technique with Indian themes, color, and composition, cementing her transitional role between Western modernism and Indian art history.