Art in India underwent a dramatic transformation in the 19th century; the effect resonates throughout the lives of all Indians and as such, their artwork. The catalyst for this artistic and aesthetic revolution: British Influence.
Below are two pages that discuss the impact of the British on Indian art during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
First encounters with instruments of mechanical reproduction spawned a revolution that stimulated the creation of mass culture.
Photography and new printing methods allowed the visual field to expand dramatically - thus, bridging the fissures of case and community.
Also was an alternate form of expressing the interplay of mythology, capital goods, and nationalist messages or ideologies to audiences that were illiterate. For the first time, communication with the vast majority of India could be established through the use of mechanical printing and photography.
Painting underwent radical change with the establishment of the British Raj.
- As the upper-class became the British colonizers there was a shift in the source of patronage for artists.
- Went from Indian royal houses to newly instituted British systems of education and display
- Establishment of the four British art schools (1850s-1870s)
- Moved art pedagogy from the Karkhana (classic Indian artisan workshop) to the schoolroom or studio
Thus began a new shift in the
way artists viewed themselves and the world around them conceptually
and imaginatively.
- Previously,
whether artists were representing the empire or articulating the
aspirations of the nation - they were interpreters of received visions
or perspectives.
- Emphasis
was on ability to represent ideas of leadership versus being agents of
their own free-will or artistic vision.
Below are examples of the obvious influence the British had on South Asian artists during the era.
Juggler
Performing the Sword-swallowing Trick,
By Nicholas &
Curths, c. 1870.
Albumen print.
Bharat Mata
with Spinning Wheel Set in the Map of India
c. 1920's. Photo
inset in a cap
From a private collection
Untitled
by S.L. Haldankar
undated. Oil on Canvas;
76.2 x 101.6 cm
Delhi Art Gallery
- This painting epitomizes many of the styles that Indian artists adopted from the British
- First the use of three-dimensional landscapes
- The horizon
- The portrayal of daily life
- the use of oil and the way the characters are drawn in an ambiguous way
The Delhi Durbar of 1903
Roderick Mackenzi
Oil on Canvas
British Empire and Commonwealth Museum
Interesting painting which depicts a procession of Indian royalty, participating in the Durbar (a historic royal tradition in South Asia). The English adopted some of the aspects of the Durbar to demonstrate their power and sacred nature to South Asians. This painting represents the European artists styles and also the procession is lead by white colonists - representing the change in leadership at the time in both politics but also artistic styles.
This portrait of the Artists close relative is an example of the adoption of European artistic styles, also notice the Western eyeglasses and beard intersecting with the South Asian subject and garb.
Western studio methods began to be utilized to depict and propagate ideas of an idealized united Hindu India.
Like the picture above which depicts a Hindu god in the shape of the Indian sub-continent - it is an example of the conflation between Hindu iconography and nationalist identities.
- This eventually had a great effect on politics and its relationship with the dissolution of the British Raj and the subsequent Indian state are inherit.
The immersion of mechanical printing methods and the new era of mass culture garnered an entire genre of Political-Art which depicted Ghandi as a Hindu leader and National hero/founder
- the use of the printable image allowed the propogation and spread of many ideas in colonial india and the effects of which can be seen in the art of contemporary Indian artists like Gupta and Malani.
