Delhi’s Jama Masjid is full of life in English artist William Carpenter’s print ‘Delhi. A Street At Back Of Jumma Masjid’. The artist seems invested in the lives of the people and their mundane activities—from those running an ox cart to a pair of women with earthen pots on their heads.
One of the most successful Orientalist American painters, Edwin Lord Weeks’ works are also full of intimate scenes—a nautch girl in the courtyard of Delhi’s Nizamuddin Auliya dargah, an example of Indian life in the bygone era, catches the eye.
When English artist and poet Edward Lear went to see the Taj Mahal in 1874, he feverishly wrote about its beauty in his journal that went beyond the ivory white monument to include details about “gorgeously dressed and be-ringed women”, parrots that were like live emeralds, poinsettias dotted cypress trees that line a breathtaking garden.
A common thread that binds these works is how the foreign gaze offered a more private view of the then-Indian life. An ongoing exhibition comprising 103 works with 85 on display, ‘Destination India: Foreign Artists In India 1857-1947’, by DAG explores this lively representation of India, through the eyes of 39 foreign artists from 12 countries.
“This is the first exhibition to demonstrate that a major branch of Orientalist painting was devoted to India (and not confined to just North Africa and West Asia). Landmark exhibitions that have focused on the genre of such paintings in the past, including ‘The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting’ (2008) at London’s Tate Gallery, do not mention India. The Indian chapter of Orientalist paintings has hardly been explored so this exhibit breaks new ground,” says Ashish Anand, CEO & MD, DAG.
A new crop of artists
In the Age of Discovery (from the 15th to the 17th century), when Europeans were exploring continents of Asia, Africa and America, their fascination with India grew, fuelled by their search for precious metals, trade, spices and ‘new knowledge’. By the late 19th century, India was already known in Europe through the works of pioneering Orientalist artists like William Hodges, Thomas and William Daniell, F. Baltazard Solvyns, Henry Salt and James Baillie Fraser.
They captured India from the point of view of grand architecture, heritage sites, and vast landscapes but did not focus on its people. Curator Giles Tillotson, SVP, DAG notes: “But by the late 19th century, the growth of tourism had made India’s major monuments well known, so artists now had to focus on other aspects to win an audience. They still depicted famous sites like the Taj Mahal and the ghats of Varanasi, but they had to find new ways of depicting them — the daily lives of Indian people was one of them.”
The new crop of artists came from all across the world — Germany, Denmark, France, Japan, Netherlands, and more. The exhibition is focused on the works of 39 of them, including Woldemar Friedrich and Horace van Ruith from Germany, Edwin Lord Weeks from America, Hiroshi Yoshida from Japan, William Carpenter and Charles W. Bartlett from England, Hugo Vilfred Pedersen from Denmark, Marius Bauer from the Netherlands, and more.
“Artists of this generation were much more interested in the living India: in the daily routine of an Indian bazaar or a haveli. They were attracted to the people, and not just to the grandees, but to ordinary people in the streets. If there was still an element of the picturesque, it was a more intimate and animated version of that aesthetic,” says Anand in the director’s note of the exhibition adding that in their works, “we find an India that we do not just see, but that we can hear and smell.”
Authentic India
A walk-through at the exhibition takes us through the works of the artistes who were particularly fascinated with life in the cities of Delhi, Varanasi, Lucknow, Udaipur, Jaipur, Gwalior and Agra. “These artists wanted to show audiences back home the ‘real’ India — a place that was exotic and different. So, colonial cities like Bombay and Calcutta were not that interesting for them, because they were too much like what they knew in Europe.
Marius Bauer complained that Bombay looked too much like London. Udaipur looked like another world — and that is what he sought,” Tillotson explains. In his works, society takes center stage. For instance, in Bauer’s ‘Courtyard Of A Palace, India’ he shows Delhi’s Humayun Tomb’s façade dotted with local folks and a knight in shining armour, thus melding his travel memories with an element of fantasy.
Similarly, Yoshida Hiroshi, a Japanese woodblock printmaker, paints famous sites of India like Buland Darwaza, Taj Mahal, and the ghats of Varanasi dotted with pilgrims, fakirs, mahouts, merchants in Kokka woodblock prints that became popular around the world. English painter Alfred Edward Emslie depicts the surreal ‘An Indian Street Scene’ with a woman carrying a child on her shoulders as its anchor on a busy road while another English artist Charles William Bartlett paints devotees in prayers in ‘The Golden Temple, Amritsar’.
Portraits were another way of show the faces from India and Danish artist Hugo Vilfred Pedersen, even was nicknamed ‘Raja Painter’ for his commissioned portraits of Indian royalty. He drew the Maharaja of Mysore, Maharaja of Burdwan and more, besides also drawing commonfolk. What explains their perspective? “It is not so much that they noticed things that Indians didn’t, it’s more about they considered worth depicting. To a local, aspects of everyday life are obvious, while to a foreigner they are strange and engaging,” says Tillotson.
‘Destination India: Foreign Artists In India 1857-1947’ is on till August 24 at DAG, 22-A, Janpath Road