The painting depicts a scene in which the fifth Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan stares upon the Taj Mahal on his deathbed, with his daughter Jahanara Begum at his feet.

Initially involved with the dominant style of European Naturalism, Tagore's mentor Ernest Binfield Havell had introduced him to various types of Indian art.

Havell had to bend much of the school rules to do this, and tolerated many of Tagore's habits including the smoking of hookah in the classrooms and refusing to stick to time schedules.

One of these paintings, of a stork by a Mughal-era artist, had been shown to Tagore by Havell, causing the former to remark that he was unaware until then of the "embarrassment of riches" that "our art" had contained.

The architectural facade which frames the painting clearly represents a painstaking replication of marble inlay work decoration and complex railing patterns.

The painting's attention is concentrated upon two main figures: the dying Shah Jahan and his daughter Jahanara Begum at the end of his bed, while the Mughal emperor's gaze is drawn to a small depiction of the Taj Mahal in the upper corner.

Locked in his room in the Red Fort by his son Aurangzeb, Shah Jahan was seen as a 'poor palace builder' whose only achievement was his monument to love: the Taj Mahal.

[10] Tagore's works typically have no anonymity in form, and themes of individualism are almost always present; this has met with some criticism amongst art critiques.