Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company
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Author: | William Dalrymple |
ISBN 13: | 9781781300978 |
Binding: | Softcover |
Language: | English |
Year: | 2019 |
Subject: | History/Modern Period |
About the Book
As the East India Company extended its sway across India in the late eighteenth century, many remarkable artworks were commissioned by Company officials from Indian painters who had previously worked for the Mughals. Published to coincide with the first UK exhibition of these masterworks at The Wallace Collection, this book celebrates the work of a series of extraordinary Indian artists, each with their own style and tastes and agency, all of whom worked for British patrons between the 1770s and the bloody end of the Mughal rule in 1857.
As the East India Company extended its sway across India in the late eighteenth century, many remarkable artworks were commissioned by Company officials from Indian painters who had previously worked for the Mughals. Published to coincide with the first UK exhibition of these masterworks at The Wallace Collection, this book celebrates the work of a series of extraordinary Indian artists, each with their own style and tastes and agency, all of whom worked for British patrons between the 1770s and the bloody end of the Mughal rule in 1857.
Edited by writer and historian William Dalrymple, these hybrid paintings explore both the beauty of the Indian natural world and the social realities of the time in one hundred masterpieces, often of astonishing brilliance and originality. They shed light on a forgotten moment in Anglo-Indian history during which Indian artists responded to European influences while keeping intact their own artistic visions and styles. These artists represent the last phase of Indian artistic genius before the onset of the twin assaults - photography and the influence of western colonial art schools - ended an unbroken tradition of painting going back two thousand years. As these masterworks show, the greatest of these painters deserve to be remembered as among the most remarkable Indian artists of all time.
Contents:
Director's Foreword Xavier Bray
Introduction William Dalrymple
The Master Artists of Lucknow
Painting in Lucknow 1776–1799 Rosie Llewellyn-Jones
The Master Artists of the Impey Album
The natural history paintings of Shaikh Zain ud-Din, Bhawani Das and Ram Das Andrew Topsfield
The Natural World
Indian Export Art? The botanical drawings H.J. Noltie
The Bengali artist Haludar Malini Roy
Shaikh Muhammad Amir of Karraya and Yellapah of Vellore
Bespoke: painting to order in 1830s Calcutta and Vellore Lucian Harris
The Late Mughal Master Artists of Delhi And Agra
Ghulam Ali Khan and the Delhi School of Painting Yuthika Sharma
Sita Ram and the Hastings Albums
Sita Ram J.P. Losty