Cleveland Museum of Art
English Babu (Native Indian Clerk) Holding a Hookah
- Date
- c. 1890
- Medium
- Gum tempera, graphite, ink, and tin on paper
- Culture
- Eastern India, Bengal, Kolkata, Kalighat
- Department
- Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
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.
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