This painting is said to have been painted ca 1970, of a young Naga man dressed with boars' tusks in his hair. A white and black kingfisher feather protrudes from the center of his hair. He is wearing a large set of earrings, a necklace with a pendant on a strand of beads. A distinctive tribal tattoo runs from his lower lip to below his chin and vertically down his torso. There are 3 million people living in the highlands of northern Burma and northeast India. Among them, they have many sub-tribal groups speaking many different dialects of a Tibetan-Burmese origin. However, they use English as their inter-tribal language. They were subjugated by the British in 1888, which accounts for this use of English.
Age: Contemporary ca 1970
Media: Oil on canvas
Size: painting 23-1/2" x 15-1/2"
Condition: Excellent
Attributed to U Mya Aye; a Burmese ethnologist, archaeologist, and great scholar known to have painted various tribal people of Burma.
