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  • Colonel Blair with his Family and an Indian Ayah

Johan Zoffany

Colonel Blair with his Family and an Indian Ayah

1786

Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

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In Tate Britain

Historic and Modern British Art: Troubled Glamour: 1760–1830

Artist
Johan Zoffany 1733–1810
Medium
Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions
Unconfirmed: 965 × 1346 mm
frame: 1247 × 1635 × 78 mm
Collection
Tate
Acquisition
Bequeathed by Simon Sainsbury 2006, accessioned 2008
Reference
T12610

Display caption

Colonel Blair served in the Bengal army in colonial India. He sits in the centre of this painting in a lavish interior setting alongside his wife and daughters. On the right, a young Indian girl holds a cat. Her identity and relationship to the family remains unknown. It is possible she is an ayah (a housemaid), or perhaps Blair’s child. The child is positioned as an outsider welcomed into the group, echoing colonial sentiment in the British Empire. The paintings on the wall intentionally portray Indian customs as both captivating and outside British ideas of civilisation.

Gallery label, April 2023

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