The unseen hands behind India's rich botanical history

H.J. Noltie's new work sheds light on the lives of painters who were largely erased by their British colonial masters

- Somak Ghoshal

(PHOTOGRAPHS FROM FLORA INDICA)

These are palimpsests that combine art and science,” says taxonomist, curator and botanical historian Henry J. Noltie by way of explaining the paintings we are looking at.

Created in the 18th and 19th centuries by Indian artists, these works were meant to record the abundance of flora and fauna that the subcontinent held, mostly at the behest of the officers at the East India Company (EIC) and, later, by British authorities after the EIC was dissolved. The taxonomic principle is so strongly at work that some of the paintings remain only partially coloured, just enough for a botanist to glean a fuller picture from the faint outlines.

We are meeting on a particularly bleak morning in Delhi at his publisher's office to talk about Noltie's latest work, Flora Indica, a handsomely produced catalogue accompanying a show at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew in London (on till 12 April). The book's subtitle, Recovering Lost Stories From Kew's Indian Drawings, signals the intentions behind this project—to appreciate the rich history of botanicals from the subcontinent while also making reparations to the artists who made these works and remain unsung to this day.

(left) 'Trapa natans var. bispinosa', unknown artist, Calcutta, c. 1800; and 'Pinus roxburghii', unknown artist, 1826-32, Saharanpur drawing.