English Babu (Native Indian Clerk) Holding a Hookah (c. 1890): Art, History and Details

English Babu (Native Indian Clerk) Holding a Hookah (c. 1890) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the 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.

Object facts

• Title: English Babu (Native Indian Clerk) Holding a Hookah
• Date: c. 1890
• Culture: Eastern India, Bengal, Kolkata, Kalighat
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera, graphite, ink, and tin on paper
• 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.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 2003.145

Collection credit

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

Further reading listed by the museum

• Sarma, Deepak. "Indian Kalighat Paintings." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 51, no. 4 (July/August 2011): 4–6.

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.