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English Babu (Native Indian Clerk) Holding a Hookah

c. 1890

Medium: Gum tempera, graphite, ink, and tin on paper
Classification: Painting
Dimensions: Secondary Support: 48 x 29.5 cm (18 7/8 x 11 5/8 in.); Painting only: 45.7 x 28 cm (18 x 11 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: Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed

About this work

This is an archetypal satirical caricature of a native Indian clerk (babu), a Bengali dapper dandy whose fashion sense combines British and Indian mores with dissonant results. Imitating his British masters, he sits cross-legged on a Victorian chair, holding a hookah, sporting a Prince Albert hairstyle, and wearing European buckled shoes. His posture models popular photo studio portraits of the time. Kalighat painters ridiculed these vain babus as foppish nouveau riche.