THE CHANGING WORLD OF VISUAL ARTS

 

CLASS- VIII    OUR PASTS -III

10.    THE CHANGING WORLD OF VISUAL ARTS

·       When you look at a work of art – a painting, sculpture, etc. – it may not be obvious that like most other things, art too is influenced by the world around it. You may not realise that what you see also shapes your own ideas.

·       In this chapter we will be looking at the changes in the world of visual arts during the colonial period, and how these changes are linked to the wider history of colonialism and nationalism.

·       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.

·       You will find that many of the visual forms that you take for granted today – say, a grand public building with domes, columns and arches; a scenic landscape, the realistic human image in a portrait, or in popular icons of gods and goddesses; a mechanically printed and mass-produced picture – had their origins in the period we will discuss in this chapter.

New Forms of Imperial Art

·       From the eighteenth century a stream of European artists came to India along with the British traders and rulers. The artists brought with them new styles and new conventions of painting. They began producing pictures which became widely popular in Europe and helped shape Western perceptions of India.

·       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.

·       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.

Looking for the picturesque

·       One popular imperial tradition was that of picturesque landscape painting. Picturesque is a 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.

·       Thomas Daniell and his nephew William Daniell were the most famous of the artists who painted within this tradition. They came to India in 1785 and stayed for seven years, journeying from Calcutta to northern and southern India. They produced some of the most evocative picturesque landscapes of Britain’s newly conquered territories in India.

·       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.

·       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.

Engraving – A picture printed onto paper from a piece of wood or metal into which the design or drawing has been cut

Portraits of authority

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

·       The rich and the powerful, both British and Indian, wanted to see themselves on canvas. Unlike the existing Indian tradition of painting portraits in miniature, colonial portraits were life-size images that looked lifelike and real.

·       The size of the paintings itself projected the importance of the patrons who commissioned these portraits. This new style of portraiture also served as an ideal means of displaying the lavish lifestyles, wealth and status that the empire generated.

Portrait – A picture of a person in which the face and its expression is prominent

Portraiture – The art of making portraits

·       As portrait painting became popular, many European portrait painters came to India in search of profitable commissions.

·       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. Indians are never at the centre of such paintings; they usually occupy a shadowy background.

Commission – To formally choose someone to do a special piece of work usually against payment

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

·       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. 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

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

·       British victories in India served as rich material for history painters in Britain. These painters drew on firsthand sketches and accounts of travellers to depict for the British public a favourable image of British actions in India. These paintings once again celebrated the British: their power, their victories, their supremacy.

·       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 (Fig. 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.

·       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.

·       Notice the way the battle scene is painted in Fig. 8. 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.

·       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.

What Happened to the Court Artists?

·       We can see different trends in different courts. 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. Fig. 10 shows you one of these. This painting celebrates the famous battle of Polilur of 1780 in which Tipu and Haidar Ali defeated the English troops.

Mural – A wall painting

Detail from a mural painting commissioned by Tipu Sultan at the Dariya Daulat palace at Seringapatam, commemorating Haidar Ali’s victory over the English army at the battle of Polilur of 1780.

·       In the court of Murshidabad we see 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. You can see this in Fig. 11. This is a picture of an Id procession painted by a court painter in the late eighteenth century. Notice how local miniature artists at Murshidabad began adopting elements of European realism.

·       They use 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.

·       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.

Perspective – The way that objects appear smaller when they are further away and the way parallel lines appear to meet each other at a point in the distance

·       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 we find local painters producing 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.

·       Not all artists, however, were court painters. Not all of them painted for the nawabs. Let us see what was happening outside the court.

The New Popular Indian Art

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

·       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.

·       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.

·       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.

·       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. 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.

·       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. These prints could therefore be sold cheap in the market. Even the poor could buy them.

·       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. 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. You must have seen many popular calendar pictures of Hindu deities in shops and roadside stalls. 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. 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.

Photographing India

·       You have seen how European painters created a variety of images of India. Such images were being produced by photographers as well.

·       By the mid-nineteenth century photographers from Europe began travelling to India, taking pictures, setting up studios, and establishing photographic societies to promote the art of photography. Some of them were portrait painters who began taking photographs of imperial officials, presenting them as figures of authority and power. Others travelled around the country searching for ruined buildings and picturesque landscapes, very much like some of the painters we have discussed. Yet others recorded moments of British military triumph.

New buildings and new styles

·       With British rule, architectural styles also changed. New styles were introduced as new cities were built, new buildings came up.

·       The new buildings that came up in the mid-nineteenth century in Bombay, were mostly in this style. Now compare this building with that in Fig. 23. The rounded arches and the pillars that you see were typical of another style that the British used in Calcutta.

·       It was borrowed from the Classical style of Greece and Rome. The British wanted their buildings to express their power and glory, and their cultural achievements.

The Search for a National Art

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. What could be defined as a national style? The art of Raja Ravi Varma

·       Raja Ravi Varma was one of the first artists who tried to create a style that was both modern and national. Ravi Varma belonged to the family of the Maharajas of Travancore in Kerala, and was addressed as Raja.

·       He mastered the Western art of oil painting and realistic life study, but painted themes from Indian mythology. 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.

·       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. 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

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

·       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.

·       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.

·       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.

 

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