Sher-Gil traveled throughout her life to various countries including Turkey, France, and India, deriving heavily from precolonial Indian art styles as well as contemporary culture.

Sher-Gil is considered an important painter of 20th-century India, whose legacy stands on a level with that of the pioneers from the Bengal Renaissance.

Amrita Sher-Gil was born Dalma-Amrita on 30 January 1913, at 4 Szilágyi Dezső square, Budapest, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

In 1921, her family moved to Summer Hill, Shimla, India, and Sher-Gil soon began learning piano and violin.

[9] At sixteen, Sher-Gil sailed to Europe with her mother to train as a painter in Paris, first at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière under Pierre Vaillent and Lucien Simon (where she met Boris Taslitzky) and later at the École des Beaux-Arts (1930–1934).

[3] In 1931, Sher-Gil was briefly engaged to Yusuf Ali Khan, but rumours spread that she was also having an affair with her first cousin and later husband Viktor Egan.

Her 1932 oil painting, Young Girls, came as a breakthrough for her; the work won her accolades, including a gold medal and election as an Associate of the Grand Salon in Paris in 1933.

[18] The National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi describes the self-portraits she made while in Paris as "[capturing] the artist in her many moods – somber, pensive, and joyous – while revealing a narcissistic streak in her personality".

[18] When she was in Paris, one of her professors said that judging by the richness of her colouring Sher-Gil was not in her element in the west, and that her artistic personality would find its true atmosphere in the east.

[19] In 1933, Sher-Gil "began to be haunted by an intense longing to return to India feeling in some strange way that there lay her destiny as a painter".

[20][19] In May 1935, Sher-Gil met the English journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, then working as assistant editor and leader writer for The Calcutta Statesman.

[22] She left herself for travel in 1936 at the behest of art collector and critic Karl Khandalavala, who encouraged her to pursue her passion for discovering her Indian roots.

[2] She moved with him to India to stay at her paternal family's home in Saraya, Sardar nagar, Chauri Chaura in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh.

[30] During her stay at Saraya, Sher-Gil painted the Village Scene, In the Ladies' Enclosure, and Siesta, all of which portray the leisurely rhythms of life in rural India.

[31] Although acclaimed by art critics Karl Khandalavala in Bombay and Charles Fabri in Lahore as the greatest painter of the century, Sher-Gil's paintings found few buyers.

[33] In September 1941, Egan and Sher-Gil moved to Lahore, then in undivided India and a major cultural and artistic centre.

She lived and painted at 23 Ganga Ram Mansions, The Mall, Lahore where her studio was on the top floor of the townhouse she inhabited.

In 1941, at age 28, just days before the opening of her first major solo show in Lahore, Sher-Gil became seriously ill and slipped into a coma.

[41] A postage stamp depicting her painting Hill Women was released in 1978 by India Post, and the Amrita Shergil Marg is a road in Lutyens' Delhi named after her.

[47] Claire Kohda refers repeatedly to Amrita Sher-Gil and to her painting the Three Girls in her 2022 novel Woman, Eating, which features a British main character of mixed Malaysian and Japanese origin.

[53] On 18 September 2023, Sher-Gil's 1937 painting The Story Teller fetched $7.4 million (Rs 61.8 crore) at a recent auction, setting a record for the highest price achieved by an Indian artist.

This came just 10 days after modernist Syed Haider Raza's painting, Gestation, fetched ₹ 51.7 crore at Pundole auction house.

In a page dedicated to the artwork, SaffronArt said the legendary artist sought to explore the realm of domestic life in The Story Teller.