Barber Cleaning a Woman’s Ear (c. 1890): Art, History and Details

Barber Cleaning a Woman’s Ear (c. 1890) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the 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.

Object facts

• Title: Barber Cleaning a Woman’s Ear
• Date: c. 1890
• Culture: Eastern India, Bengal, Kolkata, Kalighat
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera, graphite, ink, and tin on paper
• 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.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 2003.117

Collection credit

Gift of William E. Ward in memory of his wife, Evelyn Svec Ward

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.