A Barber Cleaning the Ear of a Courtesan
1890
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1890
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
A Barber Cleaning the Ear of a Courtesan is a 1890 by Shri Gobinda Chandra Roy, a Impressionism work, depicting Bengal, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
The painting shows a courtesan sitting with a barber cleaning her ear. She's dressed in a fancy sari and has a hookah nearby. This scene gives us a glimpse into the life of a new middle class in India during the late 1800s, where people had more luxury and leisure time. To learn more about the style and context of this painting, look up the museum where it's held, The Cleveland Museum of Art.
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…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Shri Gobinda Chandra Roy (b. 1800) was an Indian artist.
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