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Barber Cleaning a Woman’s Ear
c. 1890
- Medium
- Gum tempera, graphite, ink, and tin on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Secondary Support: 47.8 x 29.7 cm (18 13/16 x 11 11/16 in.); Painting only: 45.3 x 28.4 cm (17 13/16 x 11 3/16 in.)
- Culture
- Eastern India, Bengal, Kolkata, Kalighat
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Credit line
- Gift of William E. Ward in memory of his wife, Evelyn Svec Ward
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Kalighat paintings reflect the time and context in which they were created. Kalighat painters used their medium to offer penetrating and insightful critiques of British-influenced Indians as well as the British themselves through satires and caricatures. Newly rich Bengali native Indian clerks (babus) aspired to dress and behave like their British masters, and Kalighat painters taunted them for this. A chinless barber with cleaning pins tucked in his turban is cleaning the ears of a lady customer. A fashionable woman, she smokes a hookah and exposes one breast to her flirtatious barber. As the Bengali babus spent time with their mistresses and courtesans, neglected wives and concubines were portrayed as relying on the company of their servants.
