Les Morgan was born in England to parents of English and Indian ancestry. His family found themselves isolated from both Indian and English communities both because of, and despite, their adherence to British culture.

In 1989, Morgan migrated to Melbourne and began to explore the conditional recognition granted to people of colour in Australia. The following year, he moved to the Indigenous community of Yuendumu in Central Australia, where he worked as a teacher and witnessed the racism directed towards Indigenous Australians. 

Morgan painted With the boss in response to his family’s migratory experiences. Arranged like a workplace photograph, the image considers the integration of racial difference into the caste-based class structures of Lahore, Pakistan. As he has indicated, in colonial times, Anglo-Indians assumed positions such as ‘railway stationmasters or sergeants in the army’, which limited their influence and earning potential but insulated them from harsher economic realities. The underlying compositional structure of the painting subtly directs us to reflect on the rigidity of social hierarchies.