Ceylonese Woman
1884
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1884
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Ceylonese Woman is a 1884 by Scowen & Co., a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A woman in a dark sari looks straight at you, her hands folded in her lap. The background is plain, so nothing distracts from her face and the gold jewelry at her neck. This photo wasn’t made for her. British photographers in Ceylon took portraits like this to sell to tourists and governments as souvenirs or records. The woman’s expression—calm, direct—hints she knew exactly how the image would be used. If you want to see more photos from this time, look up the subject *india, 19th century*.
European photographers took portraits of the people of the colonized nations not for their subjects, but to sell them to governments as information, to tourists as aides memoires , and to “armchair tourists” as aids to the imagination.
Skeen Co. and Scowen Co., the two leading photographic establishments in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in the 1880s, rarely signed their work.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Your cart is empty
Explore artworks →
