India through the eyes of foreign artists

A recent exhibition in Delhi that features rare works by German artists provides insight into how the British ruled the nation.

Called Destination India: Foreign Artists in India, 1857-1947, the exhibit focuses on artists who travelled to imperial India from around the globe.

In an entry to the present, Indian MP and artist Shashi Tharoor says that the picture of India through the German and British artists has “long been a subject of intrigue and exploration.”

” The fascination with India’s unique scenery, magnificent statues, attractive practices and rich history has drawn many to its shores, seeking to capture the essence of this multifaceted state”.

Mr Tharoor notes that the present is “refreshing and important” as it explores the less-explored, but a powerful phase of the late 19th and early 20th generations, rather than just the first pioneers.

The museum showcases sculptures, including from American actor William Carpenter, that give flashes into not only the royal authorities, but also daily lifestyle in the Empire.

Carpenter usually did watercolour, but this 1857 artwork, pictured above, is wood engraving on paper that depicts the busy back streets of Delhi’s Jama Masjid ( mosque ).

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, countless well-known artists from Europe and England came to India. They were primarily traditional artists producing works of art in various print media, including oil and paint.

” They were attracted to the people, and not just to the grandees, but to ordinary people in the streets. If there was still a sense of the picturesque, Ashish Anand, managing director of DAG, a renowned craft company that produced the present, says it was a more personal and active variation of that aesthetic.

” In their functions, if we can put it this way, we find an India that we can hear and smell as well,” they say.

William Simpson painted another colour of the Jama Masjid in 1864, the same as the one above.

Simpson, who was primarily a war artist, was sent to India in 1859 by a publishing firm to depict the repercussions of the harsh rebellion two years prior. American warriors, known as colonists, had in 1857 set off a revolt against the English law, often referred to as the initial war of independence.

Simpson’s job halted when the printing company went bankrupt. He referred to it as the “biggest hazard of my living.” However, he continued travelling and sketching his excursions across the sub-continent.

This is a 1900 beige portrait of old Indians by Olinto Ghilardi, an European designer.

A major German musician, Ghilardi shaped contemporary Indian art in the first 20th Century.

He oversaw the development of the Bengal School of Art, which is the ancestor of contemporary American painting, Abanindranath Tagore, brother of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Ghilardi encouraged him to experiment with watercolours, acrylic, and hues, which he thoroughly used afterward in his job.

Ghilardi also held the position of vice principal at the Government School of Art in Calcutta ( now Kolkata ).

This 1896 mural of a young American girl was even made by Ghilardi.

Before he arrived in Kolkata, there was not much information about the European painter’s career. His connection with Tagore indicates his understanding as a performer among Kolkata’s wealthy Bengalis.

Many later, in 1911, Ghilardi became a popular part of an avant-garde group of European designers.

Unofficial colour painting of an Indian city landscape by American artist Carlton Alfred Smith.

Smith lived in India between 1916 and 1923. He frequently combined portraiture with surroundings to create portraits of people.

Smith, a intensive who emigrated from Camden Town in London to paint in the late Victorian period, first pursuing a career as a lithographer. He is a member of the Royal Academy of Art and is renowned for his drawings of the designs of houses and the British countryside.

This is a 1894 colour decoration of Kashmir’s Wular Lake by George Strahan, a European military expert and designer.

Strahan, a talented scholar from Surrey, enlisted in the army and left for India in 1860, working in Roorkee and Haridwar.

He began mapping northern India, Rajasthan, and the Himalayas two years later when he joined the Topographical Survey of India.

In 1888, he became supervisor of the Great Trigonometrical Survey, which mapped the Indian continent.

At the Survey, Strahan drew comfort maps before color producing was introduced.

After retirement, he lived in the highlands of Dehradun and travelled to Kashmir every summers.

This colour of Hyderabad in southeastern India was created in 1887 by European designer Woldemar Friedrich.

A traditional painter and designer, Friedrich spent much of his profession teaching at renowned German artwork academies. In the late 1880s, he travelled to India and created a series of landscapes and images, published in the 1893 text” Six Month in India”.

Carpenter’s 1857 wood carving on paper painting on Benaras ( above ) shows Varanasi- one of the nation’s oldest towns and and India’s religious capital- teeming with life.

Carpenter studied at the Royal Academy Schools in London before establishing himself as a well-known portrait and landscape artist in the 19th century.

Arriving in India in 1850, he travelled extensively, painting rulers, street scenes, landscapes, and locals across Bombay ( now Mumbai ), Rajasthan, Delhi, Punjab, Kashmir, Lahore, Ceylon ( Sri Lanka ), and Afghanistan.

This is British designer Charles William Bartlett’s 1919 woodcut printing on paper version of Punjab’s Golden Temple, a spiritual shrine for Sikhs.

Dover-born Bartlett was one of the world’s leading Chinese block painting, and afterward switched to fine arts.

In 1913, he travelled to India, Indonesia and China. From 1916 to 1925, he produced 38 woodblock designs for his Chinese publication, many of which feature views from his walks in South Asia.

British musician Edwin Lord Weeks painted this bright oil on canvas of a bullock-cart in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, in 1882.

Weeks was one of the first British artists to travel to India, having been born in Boston to a powerful family. His company family supported his creative endeavours.

Weeks second travelled to India between 1882 and 1883, painting places largely in Rajasthan. He returned in 1886, when he visited at least seven places. Weeks also wrote a travelogue account of his travels through Persia ( present-day Iran ) and India in 1896. He is renowned for his realist style and attention to detail.