Company Paintings and Raja Ravi Varma

Company Painting

• Prior to British colonization, Indian art served purposes like temple statues, manuscript illustrations, and village wall decorations.
• English officers commissioned local artists to depict Indian life, customs, flora, fauna, and locales in the 18th century for documentation and artistic reasons.
• Local artists, some migrating from places like Murshidabad, Lucknow, and Delhi, adapted their traditional painting styles to suit new patrons.
• European art's emphasis on close observation became a key feature, differing from the traditional reliance on memory and rule books.
• The fusion of traditional Indian and European styles led to the creation of the "Company School of Painting."
• The Company School style was popular among the British in India and even in Britain, where albums of these paintings were in high demand.

Raja Ravi Varma

• Photography's rise in India during the mid-19th century led to a decline in the Company style of painting.
• Art schools established by the British promoted an academic style of oil painting, using European techniques to depict Indian subjects.
• Raja Ravi Varma, a self-taught artist from the Travancore Court in Kerala, excelled in this academic style.
• Varma mastered academic realism by imitating European paintings popular in Indian palaces.
• He depicted scenes from epics like the Ramayana and Mahabharata
• Varma's paintings became very popular and were copied as oleographs for mass sale, becoming calendar images.
• By the late 19th century, rising nationalism led to a negative view of Raja Ravi Varma's style, considered too foreign and Western.

The Bengal School

• The 'Bengal School of Art' aimed to create a modern, nationalist school of art, beginning in Bengal but expanding beyond the region.
• Originating in Calcutta, the movement influenced artists across India, including Shantiniketan, where the first national art school was founded.
• The movement was associated with the Swadeshi movement and led by Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951).
• Abanindranath was supported by E. B. Havell (1861–1934), a British administrator and principal of the Calcutta School of Art.
• Abanindranath and Havell were critical of colonial Art Schools for imposing European tastes on Indian art.
• They aimed to establish a uniquely Indian style of painting.
• Mughal and Pahari miniatures were important sources of inspiration, rather than the Company School or the academic style taught in colonial art schools.

Abanindranath Tagore and E. B. Havell

• In 1896, E. B. Havell and Abanindranath Tagore sought to Indianize art education, starting at the Government Art School, Calcutta.
• Other art schools in Lahore, Bombay, and Madras focused on crafts more so than fine arts.
• Havell and Abanindranath Tagore introduced a curriculum that incorporated Indian techniques and themes
• Abanindranath's Journey's End reflects the influence of Mughal and Pahari miniatures.
• Art historian Partha Mitter notes that Abanindranath’s students aimed to recover the lost language of Indian art
• Abanindranath founded the Indian Society of Oriental Art and was a major supporter of Swadeshi values in art, manifesting in the Bengal School of Art.
• Kshitindranath Majumdar (Rasa-Lila) and M. R. Chughtai (Radhika) followed the new direction set by Abanindranath.

Shantiniketan Early Modernism

• Nandalal Bose, a student of Abanindranath Tagore, was invited by Rabindranath Tagore to head the painting department at Kala Bhavana.
• Kala Bhavana was the first national art school in India, part of Visva-Bharati University in Shantiniketan.
• Nandalal Bose created an intellectual and artistic environment focused on an Indian style of art.
• Bose focused on folk art forms from around Shantiniketan.
• Bose illustrated primers in Bengali with woodcuts and understood the role of art in teaching new ideas
• Mahatma Gandhi invited Bose to paint panels, known as the 'Haripura Posters,' for the Congress session at Haripura in 1938.
• The 'Haripura Posters' depicted ordinary rural people in various activities and were painted as lively, colorful sketches underscoring their contribution to nation building
• Kala Bhavana, inspired young artists to carry forward nationalist vision, and became a training ground for teaching art across the country.
• K. Venkatappa promoted art to reach a wider public.
• Jamini Roy rejected colonial art school training and adopted the style of folk painting, aiming for simple, easily duplicated paintings for a wider audience, based on subjects like women, children, and rural life.
• The British Raj continued to influence art policy, with the Bombay School of Art students decorating Lutyen's Delhi buildings.
• Bengal School artists were allowed to decorate the Indian House in London.

Pan-Asianism and Modernism

• Colonial art policy created a divide between admirers of European academic style and those favoring Indian style.
• Following the Partition of Bengal in 1905, the Swadeshi movement influenced ideas about art.
• Ananda Coomaraswamy wrote about Swadeshi in art and collaborated with Kakuzo Okakura, a Japanese nationalist, who wanted to unite India with other eastern nations
• Kakuzo Okakura wanted to unite India with other eastern nations and fight against western imperialism
• Two Japanese artists went to Shantiniketan to teach wash technique painting as an alternative to western oil painting.
• In 1922, an exhibition of works by Paul Klee, Kandinsky, and other Bauhaus School artists traveled to Calcutta
• These European artists rejected academic realism and created a more abstract art with squares, circles, lines, and color patches.
• Gaganendranath Tagore's paintings showed the influence of modern Western styles, using Cubist style and geometric patterns
• He also made caricatures and made fun of rich Bengalis blindly following the European style of living.

Different Concepts of Modernism: Western and Indian

• The earlier divide between anglicists and orientalists was not based on race
• Benoy Sarkar considered growing European modernism as "authentic".
• E. B. Havell favored the return to native art to create a true modern Indian art.
• Amrita Sher-Gil combined both points of view, using the Bauhaus style to depict Indian scenes.
• Modern art in India can be understood as a conflict between colonialism and nationalism
• Colonialism introduced new institutions of art such as schools, galleries and magazines
• Nationalist artists accepted these changes, they also continued to assert more Indian taste.