THE CHANGING WORLD OF VISUAL ARTS

Colonial rule introduced several new art forms, styles, materials and techniques which were creatively adapted by
Indian artists for local patrons and markets, in both elite and popular circles.

1. From the eighteenth century a stream of European artists came to India along with the British traders and rulers.

2. The artists brought with them new styles and new conventions of painting.

3. They began producing pictures which became widely popular in Europe and helped shape Western perceptions of
India.

4. European artists brought with them the idea of realism. This was a belief that artists had to observe carefully and
depict faithfully what the eye saw. What the artist produced was expected to look real and lifelike.

5. European artists also brought with them the technique of oil painting – a technique with which Indian artists were
not very familiar. Oil painting enabled artists to produce images that looked real.
6. Not all European artists in India were inspired by the same things. The subjects they painted were varied, but
invariably they seemed to emphasise the superiority of Britain – its culture, its people, its power.

 Looking for the picturesque

1. One popular imperial tradition was that of picturesque landscape painting.

2. The picturesque. This style of painting depicted India as a quaint land, to be explored by travelling British
artists; its landscape was rugged and wild, seemingly untamed by human hands.

3. Thomas Daniell and his nephew William Daniell were the most famous of the artists who painted within this
tradition.

4. They came to India in 1785 and stayed for seven years, journeying from Calcutta to northern and southern
India.

5. They produced some of the most evocative picturesque landscapes of Britain’s newly conquered territories in
India.

6. Their large oil paintings on canvas were regularly exhibited to select audiences in Britain, and their albums
of engravings were eagerly bought up by a British public keen to know about Britain’s empire.

7. A picturesque landscape painted by the Daniells had the ruins of local buildings that were once grand. The
buildings were reminders of past glory, remains of an ancient civilisation that was now in ruins. It was as if
this decaying civilisation would change and modernise only through British governance.

8. This image of British rule bringing modern civilisation to India is powerfully emphasised in the numerous
pictures of late-eighteenth-century Calcutta drawn by the Daniells.

9. The Daniells contrast the image of traditional India with that of life under British rule. their seeks to
represent the traditional life of India as pre-modern, changeless and motionless, typified by faqirs, cows and
boats sailing on the river. Showed and in ether paintings the modernising influence of British rule, by
emphasising a picture of dramatic change.

 Portraits of authority

1. Another tradition of art that became immensely popular in colonial India was portrait painting.

2. The rich and the powerful, both British and Indian, wanted to see themselves on canvas.

3. Unlike the existing Indian tradition of painting portraits in miniature, colonial portraits were life-size images
that looked lifelike and real.

4. The size of the paintings itself projected the importance of the patrons who commissioned these portraits.

5. This new style of portraiture also served as an ideal means of displaying the lavish lifestyles, wealth and
status that the empire generated.
 6. As portrait painting became popular, many European portrait painters came to India in search of profitable
commissions.

7. One of the most famous of the visiting European painters was Johann Zoffany. He was born in Germany,
migrated to England and came to India in the mid-1780s for five years.

8. The portraits that Zoffany painted had figures of Indian servants and the sprawling lawns of colonial
mansions appear in such portraits. the Indians were shown as submissive, as inferior, as serving their white
masters, while the British were shown as superior and imperious: they flaunted their clothes, stand regally or
sit arrogantly, and live a life of luxury. Indians were never at the centre of such paintings; they usually
occupy a shadowy background.

9. Many of the Indian nawabs too began commissioning imposing oil portraits by European painters.

10. You have seen how the British posted Residents in Indian courts and began controlling the affairs of the
state, undermining the power of the king.

11. Some of these nawabs reacted against this interference; others accepted the political and cultural superiority
of the British. They hoped to socialise with the British and adopt their styles and tastes.

12. Muhammad Ali Khan was one such nawab. After a war with the British in the 1770s he became a dependant
pensioner of the East India Company. But he nonetheless commissioned two visiting European artists, Tilly
Kettle and George Willison, to paint his portraits, and gifted these paintings to the King of England and the
Directors of the East India Company. The nawab had lost political power, but the portraits allowed him to
look at himself as a royal figure.

 Painting history

1. There was a third category of imperial art, called “history painting”.

2. This tradition sought to dramatise and recreate various episodes of British imperial history, and enjoyed great
prestige and popularity during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

3. British victories in India served as rich material for history painters in Britain.

4. These painters drew on firsthand sketches and accounts of travellers to depict for the British public a
favourable image of British actions in India.

5. These paintings once again celebrated the British: their power, their victories, their supremacy.

6. One of the first of these history paintings was produced by Francis Hayman in 1762 and placed on public
display in the Vauxhall Gardens in London.

7. The British had just defeated Sirajuddaulah in the famous Battle of Plassey and installed Mir Jafar as the
Nawab of Murshidabad. It was a victory won through conspiracy, and the traitor Mir Jafar was awarded the
title of Nawab. In the painting by Hayman this act of aggression and conquest is not depicted. It shows Lord
Clive being welcomed by Mir Jafar and his troops after the Battle of Plassey.

8. The celebration of British military triumph can be seen in the many paintings of the battle of Seringapatam
(now Srirangapatnam). Tipu Sultan of Mysore, as you know, was one of the most powerful enemies of the
British. He was finally defeated in 1799 at the famous battle of Seringapatam. The British troops are shown
 storming the fort from all sides, cutting Tipu’s soldiers to pieces, climbing the walls, raising the British flag
aloft on the ramparts of Tipu’s fort. It is a painting full of action and energy. The painting dramatises the
event and glorifies the British triumph.

9. Imperial history paintings sought to create a public memory of imperial triumphs. Victories had to be
remembered, implanted in the memory of people, both in India and Britain. Only then could the British
appear invincible and all-powerful.

1. There were different trends in different courts.

2. In Mysore, Tipu Sultan not only fought the British on the battlefield but also resisted the cultural traditions
associated with them. He continued to encourage local traditions, and had the walls of his palace at Seringapatam
covered with mural paintings done by local artists. One painting celebrates the famous Battle of Polilur of 1780
in which Tipu and Haidar Ali defeated the English troops.

3. In the court of Murshidabad there was a different trend. Here, after defeating Sirajuddaulah the British had
successfully installed their puppet Nawabs on the throne, first Mir Zafar and then Mir Qasim. The court at
Murshidabad encouraged local miniature artists to absorb the tastes and artistic styles of the British. In a picture
of an Id procession painted by a court painter in the late eighteenth century, local miniature artists at
Murshidabad began adopting elements of European realism. They used perspective, which creates a sense of
distance between objects that are near and those at a distance. They use light and shade to make the figures look
life like and real.

4. With the establishment of British power many of the local courts lost their influence and wealth. They could no
longer support painters and pay them to paint for the court. Many of them turned to the British.

5. At the same time, British officials, who found the world in the colonies different from that back home, wanted
images through which they could understand India, remember their life in India, and depict India to the Western
world. So local painters produced a vast number of images of local plants and animals, historical buildings and
monuments, festivals and processions, trades and crafts, castes and communities. These pictures, eagerly
collected by the East India Company officials, came to be known as Company paintings.

1. In the nineteenth century a new world of popular art developed in many of the cities of India.

2. In Bengal, around the pilgrimage centre of the temple of Kalighat, local village scroll painters (called patuas)
and potters (called kumors in eastern India and kumhars in north India) began developing a new style of art. They
moved from the surrounding villages into Calcutta in the early nineteenth century. This was a time when the city
was expanding as a commercial and administrative centre. Colonial offices were coming up, new buildings and
roads were being built, markets were being established. The city appeared as a place of opportunity where people
could come to make a new living. Village artists too came and settled in the city in the hope of new patrons and
new buyers of their art.

3. Before the nineteenth century, the village patuas and kumors had worked on mythological themes and produced
images of gods and goddesses. On shifting to Kalighat, they continued to paint these religious images.
4. Traditionally, the figures in scroll paintings looked flat, not rounded. Now Kalighat painters began to use shading
to give them a rounded form, to make the images look three-dimensional. Yet the images were not realistic and
lifelike. In fact, what is specially to be noted in these early Kalighat paintings is the use of a bold, deliberately
non-realistic style, where the figures emerge large and powerful, with a minimum of lines, detail and colours.

5. After the 1840s, we see a new trend within the Kalighat artists. Living in a society where values, tastes, social
norms and customs were undergoing rapid changes, Kalighat artists responded to the world around and produced
paintings on social and political themes. Many of the late-nineteenth-century Kalighat paintings depict social life
under British rule.

6. Often the artists mocked at the changes they saw around, ridiculing the new tastes of those who spoke in English
and adopted Western habits, dressed like sahibs, smoked cigarettes, or sat on chairs. They made fun of the
westernised baboo, criticised the corrupt priests and warned against women moving out of their homes. They
often expressed the anger of common people against the rich, and the fear many people had about dramatic
changes of social norms.

7. Many of these Kalighat pictures were printed in large numbers and sold in the market. Initially, the images were
engraved in wooden blocks. The carved block was inked, pressed against paper, and then the woodcut prints that
were produced were coloured by hand. In this way, many copies could be produced from the same block.

8. By the late-nineteenth century, mechanical printing presses were set up in different parts of India, which allowed
prints to be produced in even larger numbers. These prints could therefore be sold cheap in the market. Even the
poor could buy them.

9. Popular prints were not painted only by the poor village Kalighat patuas. Often, middle-class Indian artists set up
printing presses and produced prints for a wide market. They were trained in British art schools in new methods
of life study, oil painting and print making.

10. One of the most successful of these presses that were set up in late-nineteenth-century Calcutta was the Calcutta
Art Studio. It produced lifelike images of eminent Bengali personalities as well as mythological pictures. But
these mythological pictures were realistic. The figures were located in picturesque landscape settings, with
mountains, lakes, rivers and forests.

11. The characteristic elements of these pictures came into being in the late nineteenth century. These types of
popular pictures were printed and circulated in other parts of India too.

12. With the spread of nationalism, popular prints of the early twentieth century began carrying nationalist messages.
In many of them you see Bharat Mata appearing as a goddess carrying the national flag, or nationalist heroes
sacrificing their head to the Mata, and gods and goddesses slaughtering the British.

1. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a stronger connection was established between art and nationalism.
Many painters now tried to develop a style that could be considered both modern and Indian.

 The art of Raja Ravi Varma

1. Raja Ravi Varma was one of the first artists who tried to create a style that was both modern and national.

2. Ravi Varma belonged to the family of the Maharajas of Travancore in Kerala and was addressed as Raja.
3. He mastered the Western art of oil painting and realistic life study, but painted themes from Indian mythology.

4. He dramatised on canvas, scene after scene from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, drawing on the theatrical
performances of mythological stories that he witnessed during his tour of the Bombay Presidency.

5. From the 1880s, Ravi Varma’s mythological paintings became the rage among Indian princes and art collectors,
who filled their palace galleries with his works.

6. Responding to the huge popular appeal of such paintings, Ravi Varma decided to set up a picture production team
and printing press on the outskirts of Bombay.

7. Here colour prints of his religious paintings were mass produced. Even the poor could now buy these cheap
prints.

 A different vision of national art

1. In Bengal, a new group of nationalist artists gathered around Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951), the nephew of
Rabindranath Tagore.

2. They rejected the art of Ravi Varma as imitative and westernised and declared that such a style was unsuitable for
depicting the nation’s ancient myths and legends.

3. They felt that a genuine Indian style of painting had to draw inspiration from non-Western art traditions, and try
to capture the spiritual essence of the East.

4. So they broke away from the convention of oil painting and the realistic style and turned for inspiration to
medieval Indian traditions of miniature painting and the ancient art of mural painting in the Ajanta caves.

5. They were also influenced by the art of Japanese artists who visited India at that time to develop an Asian art
movement.

6. We can see a combination of these different pictorial elements in some of the new “Indian-style” paintings of
these years. In the paintings by Abanindranath Tagore there is the influence of Rajput miniatures. The influence
of Japanese paintings and the style of Ajanta is apparent.

7. The effort to define what ought to be an authentic Indian style of art continued.

8. After the 1920s, a new generation of artists began to break away from the style popularised by Abanindranath
Tagore. Some saw it as sentimental, others thought that spiritualism could not be seen as the central feature of
Indian culture.

9. They felt that artists had to explore real life instead of illustrating ancient books, and look for inspiration from
living folk art and tribal designs rather than ancient art forms. As the debates continued, new movements of art
grew and styles of art changed.
 EXERCISE

Q.2 One of the most popular traditions of art was

(A) Portrait painting

1. Convention : An accepted norm or style. (B) Flora and fauna painting

2. Portrait : A picture of a person in which the (C) Both (A) and (B)
face and its expression is prominent
(D) None of these
3. Portraiture : The art of making portraits

4. Engraving : A picture printed onto paper from

a piece of wood or metal into which the design Q.3 In Kalighat, Patvas and Kumhars along with
or drawing has been cut the middle class developed new school of art
for making fun of
5. Mural : A wall painting
(A) Indians
6. Scroll painting : Painting on a long roll of
paper that could be rolled up (B) Europeans

(C) Mughal emperore

(D) None of these

Q.1 The art form which observed carefully and tried
to capture exactly what the eye saw is called
_________.
Q.4 He was the pioneer in the field of painting
Q.2 The style of painting which showed Indian
landscape as a quaint, unexplored land is called (A) Nand Lal Bose
_________.
(B) Raja Ravi Verma
Q.3 Paintings which showed the social lives of
Europeans in India are called _________. (C) Rabindranath Tagore

Q.4 Paintings which depicted scenes from British (D) Jamini Roy
imperial history and their victories are called
_________.

Q.1 Company paintings were first produced in the Q.1 Why did the scroll painters and potters come to
Kalighat ? Why did they begin to paint new
(A) Madras Presidency themes ?

(B) Bombay Presidency Q.2 Why can we think of Raja Ravi Varma’s
paintings as national ?
(C) Calcutta Presidency
Q.3 In what way did the British history paintings in
(D) None of these
India reflect the attitudes of imperial
conquerors ?
Q.4 Why do you think some artists wanted to
develop a national style of art ?

Q.5 Why did some artists produce cheap popular

prints ? What influence would such prints have
had on the minds of people who looked at
them ?