BRITISH ARTISTS’ MYOPIC VIEW OF INDIA’S PEOPLE

The County Museum of Art’s exhibit of British art made in colonized India could be viewed as a telling record of British life styles and the Indian scene during two centuries of hegemony--or as a one-sided view of a conquered land.

“There isn’t one way to look at this exhibit,” said Pratapaditya Pal, co-curator of the 100-piece graphic display. “Whenever the British showed scenes of people, they depicted only themselves--invariably the Indians were left out. And you got a romantic view of India. The British didn’t send back home pictures that spoke of the abject poverty and squalor, death and destruction that were part of the real India.

“But the British artists preserved an India the Indians never portrayed themselves. For instance, two watercolors by (William) Simpson depict the River Ganges. If you had to pick one thing that has symbolized India to the world, it would be that river, but before the British, no Indian artist in 2,000 years had ever painted it. Even though these works were painted with European eyes and technique, they remain very vivid evocations of the Indian scene, of Indian landscape. Then there are ethnographic studies of Indian (religious) festivals, crafts and people.”

“From Merchants to Emperors: British Artists and India, 1757-1930” depicts “all aspects of British life in India and the British perceptions of India,” said Pal, the museum’s senior curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art. It consists of drawings, prints, paintings and photographs, mostly by British artists, including Tilly Kettle, Edward Lear and Thomas and William Daniell.

“There are scenes in the exhibit of what the British did and how they lived; the games they played and their modes of transportation, for instance,” said Pal, who was born and raised in India under the raj (British rule). The depictions, such as a watercolor of a sahib in a palanquin being carried on the shoulders of Indian servants, “were much overblown to show the British sense of superiority over the Indians,” he noted.

“Then there’s a whole wall in the exhibit of caricatures done in England, which to my mind are very amusing and touching. They tell what their own countrymen thought of the British and their shenanigans in India.”

In one caricature, three Indian servants, one tending to the bills, another fanning away the heat and a third keeping alive the hookah his master smokes, wait on an arrogant Englishman, his feet propped up on a table.

“The British lived surrounded by servants, upon whom they depended to function in the foreign land,” said Pal, who received two doctoral degrees in Indian art from England’s Cambridge University. “They suffered all sorts of problems being away from their own country. They died very young because of the tropical climate and couldn’t speak the language.”

Also in the exhibit are photographs of British architecture, such as a picture of a classically designed parliamentary house in New Delhi. “These show the British imperial image and stance and their pompousness in constructing buildings obviously derived from Roman architecture,” Pal said.

The Britain-bound depictions of India didn’t stay rosy forever, though. Reality crept in with the advent of photojournalism, epitomized by Capt. Willoughby Hooper’s chilling photo of emaciated victims of the 1877 Madras famine.

“Our main thrust (in a photography section of the exhibit) was to show how early British photographers worked with the same romanticism of the early 18th-Century landscape painters,” Pal explained. “But photojournalism was the doom of the artists. Now the British back home could see the realities of Indian life, like famines and floods. The British perception of India was substantially altered and (the cause of the Indians) gained greater support. This ultimately led to independence--no more did every one believe the British were saviors.”

“From Merchants to Emperors,” to Jan. 4, was organized by the Pierpont Morgan Library and drawn mostly from the collection of Paul F. Walter of New York. Pal co-curated the exhibit with Vidya Dehejia, adjunct associate professor of art history at New York’s Columbia University.