The Cleveland Museum of Art
Collection Online as of April 25, 2024
A Barber Cleaning the Ear of a Courtesan
c. 1890
(Indian, active late 1800s)
Secondary Support: 50 x 30.3 cm (19 11/16 x 11 15/16 in.); Painting only: 45.5 x 28.2 cm (17 15/16 x 11 1/8 in.)
Location: not on view
Description
Popular Kalighat paintings were made into woodcuts for mass printing and distribution. This image reveals the lifestyle of a new middle class of Indians who prospered under British rule. Holding a fancy hookah for pleasurable smoking, draped with jewels, wearing a glamorous sari, and with a flower tucked in her hair, she has the luxury of going to a barber to have her ears cleaned.The age of mechanical reproduction made a heavy impact on the new Indian middle class during the last decades of the 1800s. British magazines and periodicals were fashionable among Indian households, and they served to shape their taste for British and Western styles and commodities. Cheaper prints such as this woodcut were made for more popular distribution. They spoke to aspirations or observations by a broader, less privileged community.
- ?-2003William E. Ward [1922-2004], Solon, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art2003-The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
- Indian Gallery 242b Rotation – November 2017-April 2018. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (November 10, 2017-April 16, 2018).
- {{cite web|title=A Barber Cleaning the Ear of a Courtesan|url=false|author=Shri Gobinda Chandra Roy|year=c. 1890|access-date=25 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}
Source URL:
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2003.118