Latest news with #IndianArt
BBC News
25-05-2025
- Business
- BBC News
India's colonial past revealed through 200 masterful paintings
Founded in 1600 as a trading enterprise, the English East India company gradually transformed into a colonial power. By the late 18th Century, as it tightened its grip on India, company officials began commissioning Indian artists - many formerly employed by the Mughals - to create striking visual records of the land they were now ruling.A Treasury of Life: Indian Company Paintings, c. 1790 to 1835, an ongoing show in the Indian capital put together by Delhi Art Gallery (DAG), features over 200 works that once lay on the margins of mainstream art history. It is India's largest exhibition of company paintings, highlighting their rich diversity and the skill of Indian by largely unnamed artists, these paintings covered a wide range of subjects, but mainly fall into three categories: natural history, like botanical studies; architecture, including monuments and scenic views of towns and landscapes; and Indian manners and customs."The focus on these three subject areas reflects European engagements with their Indian environment in an attempt to come to terms with all that was unfamiliar to Western eyes," says Giles Tillotson of DAG, who curated the show."Europeans living in India were delighted to encounter flora and fauna that were new to them, and ancient buildings in exotic styles. They met – or at least observed – multitudes of people whose dress and habits were strange but – as they began to discern – were linked to stream of religious belief and social practice." Beyond natural history, India's architectural heritage captivated European visitors. Before photography, paintings were the best way to document travels, and iconic Mughal monuments became prime subjects. Patrons soon turned to skilled local the Taj Mahal, popular subjects included Agra Fort, Jama Masjid, Buland Darwaza, Sheikh Salim Chishti's tomb at Fatehpur Sikri (above), and Delhi's Qutub Minar and Humayun's once-obscure and long-anonymous Indian artist Sita Ram, who painted the tomb, was one of them. From June 1814 to early October 1815, Sita Ram travelled extensively with Francis Rawdon, also known as the Marquess of Hastings, who had been appointed as the governor general in India in 1813 and held the position for a decade. (He is not to be confused with Warren Hastings, who served as India's first governor general much earlier.) The largest group in this collection is a set of botanical watercolours, likely from Murshidabad or Maidapur (in present-day West Bengal). While Murshidabad was the Nawab of Bengal's capital, the East India Company operated there. In the late 18th century, nearby Maidapur briefly served as a British base before Calcutta's (now Kolkata) rise eclipsed part of the Louisa Parlby Album - named after the British woman who compiled it while her husband, Colonel James Parlby, served in Bengal - the works likely date to the late 18th Century, before Louisa's return to Britain in 1801."The plants represented in the paintings are likely quite illustrative of what could be found growing in both the well-appointed gardens as well as the more marginal spaces of common greens, waysides and fields in the Murshidabad area during the late eighteenth century," writes Nicolas Roth of Harvard University. "These are familiar plants, domestic and domesticated, which helped constitute local life worlds and systems of meaning, even as European patrons may have seen them mainly as exotica to be collected." Another painting from the collection is of a temple procession showing a Shiva statue on an ornate platform carried by men, flanked by Brahmins and trumpeters. At the front, dancers with sticks perform under a temporary gateway, while holy water is poured on them from above. Labeled Ouricaty Tirounal, it depicts a ritual from Thirunallar temple in Karaikal in southern India, capturing a rare moment from a 200-year-old tradition. By the late 18th Century, company paintings had become true collaborations between European patrons and Indian artists. Art historian Mildred Archer called them a "fascinating record of Indian social life," blending the fine detail of Mughal miniatures with European realism and perspective. Regional styles added richness - Tanjore artists, for example, depicted people of various castes, shown with tools of their trade. These albums captured a range of professions - nautch girls, judges, sepoys, toddy tappers, and snake charmers."They catered to British curiosity while satisfying European audience's fascination with the 'exoticism' of Indian life," says Kanupriya Sharma of DAG. Most studies of company painting focus on British patronage, but in south India, the French were commissioning Indian artists as early as 1727. A striking example is a set of 48 paintings from Pondicherry - uniform in size and style - showing the kind of work French collectors sought by painting (above) shows 10 men in hats and loincloths rowing through surf. A French caption calls them nageurs (swimmers) and the boat a the standout images are two vivid scenes by an artist known as B, depicting boatmen navigating the rough Coromandel coast in stitched-plank no safe harbours near Madras or Pondicherry, these skilled oarsmen were vital to European trade, ferrying goods and people through dangerous surf between anchored ships and the shore. Company paintings often featured natural history studies, portraying birds, animals, and plants - especially from private menageries. As seen in the DAG show, these subjects are typically shown life-size against plain white backgrounds, with minimal surroundings - just the occasional patch of grass. The focus remains firmly on the species Anand, CEO of DAG says the the latest show proposes company paintings as the "starting point of Indian modernism".Anand says this "was the moment when Indian artists who had trained in courtly ateliers first moved outside the court (and the temple) to work for new patrons". "The agendas of those patrons were not tied up with courtly or religious concerns; they were founded on scientific enquiry and observation," he says. "Never mind that the patrons were foreigners. What should strike us now is how Indian artists responded to their demands, creating entirely new templates of Indian art."
The Guardian
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Ancient India review – snakes, shrines and sexual desire power a passionate show
About 2,000 years ago, Indian art went through a stunning transformation led, initially, by Buddhists. From being enigmatically abstract it became incredibly accomplished at portraying the human body – and soul. You can see this happen in the bustling yet harmonious crowd of pilgrims and gift-givers you meet about a third of the way through this ethereal and sensual show. Two horses bearing courtiers or merchants are portrayed in perfect perspective, their rounded chests billowing, their bodies receding. Around them a crowd of travelling companions, on horseback and foot, are depicted with the same depth. Their bodies and faces are full of life, in a frenetic pageant, a bustling carnival, yet this human hubbub is composed with order and calm. It's a Buddhist masterpiece, which helps explain the inner harmony: one of a group of stunning reliefs in this show from the Great Stupa of Amaravati, excavated in the early 1800s by the East India Company and now owned by the British Museum. A stupa is a domed structure holding Buddhist or Jain relics, perhaps modelled on prehistoric mounds, but this one was embellished in the first century AD with sublime pictorial art. Buddha himself stands further along the slender stone block, taller and more still than everyone else. The exact dates of Siddhartha Gautama, the teacher and seeker of enlightenment who became the Buddha, are unknown but by the time this work was created the movement he started was about 500 years old and spearheading one of the most influential renaissances in the story of world art. This exhibition gets to that artistic truth in an unlikely way. It doesn't bother with the minutiae of stylistic change or dynastic history. Instead, it tells a passionate story about the three great religions of ancient India – Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism – and their vitality across time. You meet practitioners of these faiths in Britain today, sharing their devotion on film. This is a wonderfully direct way to blast the museum dust off such ancient art – and when that dust clears, you get a much better sense of its living power. Hindu and Jain beliefs are older than Buddhism (far older, in the case of Hinduism) but it was after the Buddhist breakthrough in storytelling art that they too became brilliantly figurative. Is it crude to see this as competition? It was at the very least a dialogue. At first I mistook a display of beautiful Jain statues for Bodhisattvas, Buddhist saints. In fact, the slender swaying grace of these figures embodies the ascetic Jain ideal of universal compassion. Yet the biggest, most spectacular artistic transformation was achieved by Hinduism. You can't get a friendlier, more paradoxically human deity than the elephant-headed Ganesha. A statue of him in this show, dating from about AD1100 to AD1200, is a technical miracle in the way the artist fuses an elephant's head with a human body – both precisely observed. But it's the pathos that gets you, the artist's intuition of the wisdom and sensitivity of elephants. Ganesha here is not just divine but lovable. Such moving, homely art is a long way from a black stone lingam, the older, aniconic Hindu representation of Shiva as a male tube being inserted into a female yoni. But sexual desire is a feeling too and the big difference between Christianity and the religions here is Indian sacred art's embrace of the erotic. Statuettes and plaques that date from as early as 300BC depict Yaksis, female nature spirits, with jewellery on their curvy bodies and the same spherical, bulging breasts that you see throughout the show. Female sexual and reproductive power are celebrated simultaneously in the art of all three great religions. Another relief from the Great Stupa of Amaravati portrays The Birth of the Buddha. Its main character is Gautama's mother, Queen Maha Maya. She lies on a bed in a curvy pose, and gives birth in a posture almost as luxuriant. Growing up in a Protestant Christian church, I thought of religion as a taking away, a denial. Here it is an addition – human and elephant, spirit and body, dream and reality. Life infuses these religions: they don't oppose themselves to it. That appetite for reality, as they attempt to make sense of the cosmos, mortality and desire, to find the dharma, must be what made India's religions so exportable. Many of us don't think of Buddhism as specifically Indian because it has spread so far so quickly. One of the most captivating works here is a silk painting of the Buddha set in a dreamworld of deep reds and greens, from a cave near Dunhuang, China, created in the eighth century AD. Nearby in the same final space is a statue of Ganesha from Java, one of the many places Hinduism took root. This is an exhibition with a true sense of mystery. Not just in the atmospheric way it is lit with coloured misty veils separating displays, or even the marvels you encounter such as a nagini snake goddess floating in the shadows – but in the way it worships life. Ancient India: Living Traditions is at the British Museum, London, from 22 May to 19 October
BBC News
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Identical sister artists The Singh Twins have Snape Maltings show
Internationally acclaimed twin sister artists who spend hundreds of hours painting highly intricate works have opened a new Singh Twins have chosen 11 prints and two new lightbox artworks to go on display, as part of Snape Maltings' summer arts programme in free exhibition, which runs until 20 July, fuses traditional Indian miniature art and digital media to explore themes and motifs around politics, identity and culture."It makes the point – and I think people will take that away – that we're all connected," said Amrit Singh. The artworks have been chosen from The Singh Twins' Slaves of Fashion the MBE for their contribution to UK art, the British-born identical twins - who live near Liverpool - draw on their Indian heritage and western culture for show explores the legacies of empire through the history of textiles. "We'd like people to take away the key messages of our work - in this case, the history of colonialism and how that needs to be redressed," said Rabindra Singh."It also looks at how the legacies of empire still have visibility in the modern world, whether you're talking about attitudes to race, debates around colonial cultural ownership, for example."Her sister continued: "Wherever you come from, whichever your background is, there will be something in your background you'll be able to relate to." The free exhibition opened on 10 May and has been carefully curated by Devi Singh, who has worked in Suffolk's art world for years and has long been an admirer of the sisters' contemporary style."They tell a story that requires an element of concentration, but what's great about it is that you can look at the work and not see something and then come back and see something new, over and over again," she said. "The detail is exquisite." Snape Maltings is run by the charity Britten Pears Arts, which promotes cultural offerings. The charity originated from the Lowestoft-born composer Benjamin Britten and his partner, the singer Peter Pears."We feel it's a real coup that they [The Singh Twins] accepted our invitation to come and show here," said the charity's Harry Young."It's part of our invitation to broaden our programme and to hopefully make it appeal to a more diverse audience."It's thrilling for us to have the work here." Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
