NOT JUST COMPANY LTD.

INDIAN ART CREATED FOR THE EAST INDIA COMPANY IS A REVELATION IN CONTENT AND STYLE

- Trisha Gupta

By the late 18th century, Indian artists found it increasingly difficult to earn a living from the declining centres of the Mughal court or its successors. Meanwhile, they began receiving commissions from patrons affiliated to the East India Company. The art these painters created for expatriates has never received its due.

As the sunset on the British empire, these were no longer displayed proudly in the UK, nor studied much in a newly independent India. In 2014, when art historian B.N. Goswamy picked out 101 images for his Spirit of Indian Painting, only one was a Company commission.

The very name ‘Company School’ betrays its emphasis on the colonial patrons “while excluding any reference (even geographical) to the artists who created beautiful works of art”, notes art historian Henry Noltie, whose essay on 18th and early 19th-century Indian botanical drawings is part of a superb new volume called