English Babu (Native Indian Clerk) Holding a Hookah
Unknown Artist
c. 1890
Medium
Gum tempera, graphite, ink, and tin on paper
Dimensions
painting only: 45.7 × 28 cm · secondary support: 48 × 29.5 cm
Classification
Painting
Department
Indian and Southeast Asian Art
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Gift of William E. Ward in memory of his wife, Evelyn Svec Ward
Accession Number
2003.145
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
This is an archetypal satirical caricature of an 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.