Painting

Some information on the socio-economic, political and cultural life during the colonial period can be obtained from the paintings of that period. The Company Paintings, also

referred as ‘Patna Kalam’ emerged under the patronage of the East India Company. They picturise the people and scenes as they existed at the time. Trades, festivals, dances and the attire of people are visible in these works. Company paintings continued to be popular in the 19th century until the introduction of photography in India in the 1840s.

The pictorial images produced by the British and Indians—paintings, pencil drawings, etchings, posters, cartoons and bazaar prints—are especially important records of the great revolt of 1857. The British pictures offer images that were meant to provoke a range of different emotions and reactions. Some of them commemorate the British heroes who saved the English and repressed the rebels. Relief of Lucknow, painted by Thomas Jones Barker in 1859, is one such example. Another painting of this period, In Memoriam by Joseph Noel Paton, recorded in painting two years of the revolt of 1857. One can see English women and children huddled in a circle, looking helpless and innocent, seemingly waiting for the inevitable—dishonour, violence and death. These paintings of the mutiny period are important for the historian to interpret and understand the worldviews of the British and the Indians regarding this major event.

Kalighat painting that came to the fore in Calcutta in

the nineteenth century depicted not only mythological figures but also ordinary people engaged in their everyday lives. The latter pictures captured the social changes taking place in the Calcutta of the time. These paintings made a comment on social evils of the time; some of these paintings satirised certain modes adopted by the people of the time.

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, a new art movement emerged which received its primary stimulus from the growing nationalism in India. Artists like Nandalal Bose and Raja Ravi Varma were representatives of this new trend. In the rise of the Bengal School led by Abanindranath Tagore (nephew of Rabindranath Tagore), E.B. Havell (who joined the art school in Calcutta as principal) and Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy (son of an important Tamil political leader

in Sri Lanka) played a vital role. Though many of the paintings of this new trend primarily focused on themes of Indian mythology and cultural heritage, they are important sources for studying the modern art movement in India and for the art historians.