Review

A Slice of History

An exhibition of more than 90 paintings and drawings made by Western artists during 1790 – 1927, from the collection of Victoria & Albert Museum, London, displayed at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi provided a glimpse into the Indian life and landscapes during the Colonial period. Suruchi Khubchandani reviews the show.

The role of the visual arts in the assertion of European power in Asia has been the subject of perpetual investigation and redefinition. But as a matter of an aligned fact, it seems that there are exploration grounds in the art-historical realm which perceive the European contribution to Indian art and culture through means of sociological documentation.

The debate, if any, can be contextualised within the framework of an ongoing exhibition ‘Indian Life and Landscape by Western Artists’ at National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi. The exhibition, conducted by NGMA in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, showcases more than ninety paintings and drawings from the V&A Collection, spaced in the period of 1790 – 1927.

The rare and interesting watercolors, sketches, aquatints, lithographs, and engravings by European artists who visited India between 18th to 20th century included in this exhibition, are divided into four categories, namely ‘Picturesque,’ ‘Amateur Artists,’ ‘Romanticism in India’ and lastly, ‘Realism and the Indian Student.’

The spread of exhibits pans to bring about the first visual representations of India by Western artists, mainly of imaginary landscapes and settings. These Western artists started to frequent India from the 1790s with a monopoly over the patronage of the emergent colonial elite. They included Thomas and William Daniell (uncle-nephew duo), William Hodges, Tilly Kettle and John Zoffany, joined by a few others (depicted in the exhibition) like William Carpenter, Samuel Howitt, Robert Melville Grindlay, Robert Smith and William Simpson.

The Daniells, as are well-known, spent almost nine years traveling throughout India and a further twelve years publishing the fruits of their travel in the series of the 144 aquatints strong ‘Oriental Scenery.’ The series not only represented a wonderful selection of inaccessible Indian monuments nearing their end but also affirmed and fed in their making, the English market, keen for views of distant lands, peoples, flora and fauna, not to mention the historic architecture, thus helping to establish India as a land of exotic subjects.

The topographical survey done by the Daniells of the interiors of the country, along with the work done by the other artists, contributed to a British awareness and understanding of Indian architectural history, along with strengthening their political standing. A conjunct concealed agenda also worked simultaneously to raise the tension between the picturesque and the exotic. The artist’s purpose (who, it should be remembered, was financially and personally supported by the Colonial Empire) was to report India in all its strangeness. The realistic English aesthetic applied by these artists to the Indian scenes served clearly to restrain than reveal their exotic nature. The artist here played a minor role of the visual documentor at a moment of Britain’s political self assertion in the region. This does not hold the artist responsible for it, but it just acknowledges that the enquiring mind was not disembodied, that even the artist’s vision was located in an occasion.(1) A comprehensive pictorial record of India was being created, with details and hidden messages degrading the Indian ‘self’ and ‘Indianness.’

Samuel Borne (1834-1912), perhaps the pre-eminent figure in any aesthetic history of photography in colonial India, published a celebrated series of reports in British Journal of Photography between 1863 and 1870. His narrative presents an unattractive picture of a photographic imperialist intent on achieving high-altitude viewpoints from which he could look down on a picturesquely ordered India. Bourne’s 1866 Kashmir Narrative is peppered with a dislike of the dialogic spaces of face-to-face encounters (‘listening to nothing but barbarous Hindostani’).(2) Ascendancy appealed to Bourne because it facilitated an encompassing view. Pulled by the similar string, an elevated, and a far-sighted perspective of the picturesque is a noticeable event in the scenic landscapes drawn by the coterie of British artists. Within the stretch of the landscape are depicted variably the tiny bunches of brown, miserly Indian laborers indulged in petty chores like raising Maharaja’s carriages, a snake charmer fluting snake to his tune watched over by a diligent British officer and half-clad Indians sitting idle. The depiction of the great Indian monuments perspired in a crumbled and withering state suggested the condition of a country rich in its heritage, but ignorant of the means and will to preserve it. The monuments as portrayed were then subject of ‘White man’s burden.’

The issue can be gauged in a colonial context, completely overlooked in the text (wall notes, brochure) circulated by NGMA, which seems to be coming the Western way from the collaborative venture with the V&A Museum.

The invaluable images cannot be observed in a singular context, ignoring the political or sociological polemics attached to it. Besides preparing a substantial ground for documentation of the Indian people and their lifestyle, the images reveal an expression of Colonial ideologies as both emerging from and reinforcing the Colonial bases of alien powers.

This view has partly risen out of the recent debates of Orientalism, a theory essentially propounded by Edward Said in 1978 and also from the realignments within the field of art history. One of the most significant constructions of Orientalist scholars is that of the ‘Orient’ itself. What is considered as the Orient is a vast region, one that spreads across a myriad of cultures and countries. It includes most of Asia as well as the Middle East. The depiction of this single ‘Orient,’ which can be studied as a cohesive whole, is one of the most powerful accomplishments of Orientalist scholars. It essentialises an image of a prototypical Oriental – a biological inferior that is culturally backward, peculiar, and unchanging – to be depicted in dominating and sexual terms.

The discourse and visual imagery of Orientalism is laced with notions of power and superiority, formulated initially to facilitate a colonising mission on the part of the West and perpetuated through a wide variety of discourses and policies. The language is critical to the construction. The feminine and weak Orient awaits the dominance of the West; it is a defenseless and unintelligent whole that exists for, and in terms of, it’s Western counterpart. The importance of such a construction is that it creates a single subject matter where none existed, a compilation of previously unspoken notions of the Other. The paintings and drawings depicted in the exhibition are complex objects validating the Orientalism debate whilst standing in necessarily complex relation with the historical events and ideas.

On an end note, subscribing to one of the propositions of T.J.Clark’s ‘On The SocialHistory of Art’ would be like sanely shelving a path towards the cycle of cultural evolvement and growth. The contextual pronouncement being: A work of art may have ideology (in other words, those ideas, images and values which are generally accepted, dominant) as its material, but it works that material; it gives it a new form and at certain moments that new form is itself subversion of ideology. The Oriental discoveries and the aesthetic pattern and practices guided much of the anti-colonial departures in art, equipping the new Indian artist with art. Following that time, the Indian schools of arts were established at various points of time across the country. The language of Indian art was cultivated by the internal and external forces, acting as steps to the direction Indian art has essentially travelled and reached today.

The exhibition is on view till December 6, at NGMA, Jaipur House, New Delhi.

(Suruchi Khubchandani is an art writer based in Delhi. She has done M.V.A. in Art History & Aesthetics from M.S.University, Baroda. Email: sur14in@gmail.com)