painting;
album
- Museum number
- 1884,0913,0.51
- Description
-
Opaque watercolour painting on European paper of a sugar cane (?) worker and his wife. The woman stands with a basket wedged under one arm and a smaller one in her hand. She carries an infant in a cloth, probably part of her sari, which is tied behind her back and over her bare chest. A prominent leaf motif is tattooed on her right arm. Her hair is unkempt and she wears simple ornaments. Her husband, wearing a kaupina (loincloth), with his hair tied in a knot on the crown of his head, squats on the ground trimming the sugar cane (?) with a large knife. Nearby is a chicken coop.
- Production date
- 1830-1835 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 18.20 centimetres
-
Width: 11.30 centimetres
- Curator's comments
- Dallapiccola 2010:
This painting is part of a set of ninety-two drawings depicting various Indian castes and occupations. An explanatory caption in English, written in a flowing early nineteenth-century hand, accompanies the majority of the drawings. Their repertoire covers a vast range of castes from the Telugu Brahmins to the Boyis and occupations from the astrologer to the jailer, interspersed with a colourful array of religious mendicants, acrobats and musicians. Of particular interest is a drawing of a private soldier (1884,0913,0.74), of the Private Grenadier Company of the 1st Madras Native Infantry, dressed in a uniform of the early 1820s, which helps to date the album to the early decades of the nineteenth century. This date is confirmed by the presence of a portrait of Serfoji II, raja of Thanjavur (r. 1798–1832), and his wife in this volume (1884,0913,0.44). In depicting the faces of his characters the artist consistently uses a ‘miniaturist technique’, i.e. minute dots of colour; the chin, forehead and nose areas are lightly shaded to suggest plasticity. The rendering of textiles, costumes and jewellery reveals a documentary precision and care for detail. The figures are slender and elegant rather than imposing, and the background is no longer monochrome: either the paper is left plain or in some cases a line of trees and shrubs dots the line of the horizon. The foreground is sometimes green, suggesting perhaps a meadow, or a very pale brownish wash but most frequently a dark, heavy looped shadow is attached to the feet of the figures.
- Location
- Not on display
- Acquisition date
- 1884
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 1884,0913,0.51
