A Woman Combing Her Hair

Woman Combing Her Hair, 1930s or 1940s, 32.5 cm, private collection

From the early twentieth century onward, Balinese carvers multiplied representations of scenes drawn from everyday life in order to cater to the tastes of foreign visitors.

In modern Balinese sculpture, the everyday situations and attitudes depicted very often correspond to variations of a type within a theme: a seated woman or man, a woman kneeling in prayer, a priest kneeling before the table on which he performs a ritual, and so forth. While in most cases this logic limits iconographic variation to a few minor adjustments, it sometimes happens that a work stands out in its treatment of a theme, the sculptor having clearly attempted a rare, or even genuinely unique, approach.

Among the subjects drawn from daily life that were treated during the 1930s and 1940s, representations of women combing their hair occupy a prominent place. Probably because they were easier to execute, the most common type is that of a woman combing her hair pressed against her body—either with her bare hands or with the aid of a comb.

Centre: Woman Combing Her Hair, 1930s or 1940s, sculpture with flat backing, 40 cm, private collection

By contrast, wayang-style representations showing the hair completely loose and held away from the body—like a broad hanging ribbon—are distinctly rarer. The sculpture reproduced here stands out through its combination of the theme of personal grooming with that of motherhood: a woman seated on a decorated seat combs her long hair with a comb, while in front of her, directly on the ground, a young girl sits cross-legged.

The treatment is of great refinement. In the way the triangular face tapers from the cheekbones to the chin, in the elongation of the arms and fingers, and in the elegant interplay of curves defining the contours of the hair and the garments, the carver seems to have sought to exalt the characteristics of the wayang style. The seat is adorned with delicate incisions suggesting floral motifs.

Finally, this piece constitutes a significant example of the attention that the finest Balinese sculptors pay to the properties of the material: by closely observing the back of the figure, one can see that the sculptor very subtly followed the structure of the wood in shaping the head, integrating the nuanced lines of the grain as so many strands whose movement echoes the cascading hair.