DAG hosts New Delhi show ‘Destination India: Foreign Artists in India 1857-1947’
William Simpson, Jumma Musjid, Delhi, 1864.
Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer
DAG (previously known as Delhi Art Gallery) is currently hosting in New Delhi ‘Destination India: Foreign Artists in India 1857-1947’ (July 6 – Aug. 17), an exhibition that focuses on foreign artists travelling to India from different parts of the world between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The gallery says it is a “less explored but equally fascinating period, coinciding between the Uprising (1857) and Independence (1947).” In the selection of works, one encounters a host of people and places of India, as seen through the eyes of nearly forty artists from many countries, including Germany, Holland, Denmark, USA, France and even Japan, besides Britain, who were intent on a more personal and intimate engagement with the subcontinent.
Following an exploration of British and other European representations of India, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries — the age of discovery, through the works of well-known figures such as William Hodges, Thomas and William Daniell, Baltazard Solvyns, Henry Salt and James Baillie Fraser, as well as early photography - the show extends the trajectory of enquiry. It focuses on foreign artists whose works are examples of a late phase of Orientalist art. The era the exhibition delves into also retraces the steps of the artists-explorers who came before them, but looks more into the intricate perspectives of a new generation of artists who found different nuances and beauty in the Indian subcontinent. It is curated by Giles Tillotson, Senior VP, DAG.
By focusing on the time period between 1857 and 1947, the gallery says it aims to “uncover a forgotten archive of painters and printmakers in a fast-changing (colonial) India, in a period when images were being transmitted as picture postcards (from 1880 onwards) and photography had become the dominant medium of documentation.” The show breaks new ground by focusing for the first time on this later period of foreign painting in India, and by adding the Indian chapter to the larger story of Orientalist painting.
While the pioneers - artists who visited India in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries - sought grand monuments and vast new landscapes as part of Enlightenment-inspired project to investigate India’s civilisations to project its historic heritage to the West - foreign Orientalist painters of India, whether British, German, Dutch, Danish, American or Japanese, who followed later, offered intimate glimpses of Indian life, often from street level. During this period in the Victorian era, Europe’s scholarly study of India’s past continued — perhaps also expanded.
Starting with Edward Lear who toured India for over a year between November 1873 and January 1875, Orientalist artists included in the exhibition who came in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in their exploration of a living India, are William Simpson, Olinto Ghilardi, Marius Bauer, Erich Kips and Hugo Pederson, and even those who came from even further afield, such as Edwin Lord Weeks from America, and Hiroshi Yoshida from Japan.
Ashish Anand, CEO and MD, DAG, says that “when considering British and other European representations of India, the focus is often on the pioneers. The problem with this traditional trajectory is that it overlooks the many interesting artists who visited India — from England and from other European countries — in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ... They came to India with a different aesthetic sensibility and with different interests. In their works, we find an India — if we can put it this way — that we do not just see, but that we can hear and smell.”
‘Destination India’ takes a fascinating turn in the narrative of foreign representation of India including the daily routine of an Indian bazaar or a haveli (mansion). It depicts ordinary people in the streets, with a more intimate and animated version of previous aesthetic. For example, a riverside ghat (flight of steps leading down to a river) is shown not just for the crumbling buildings, but also for the gaily dressed people there. ‘Destination India’ therefore underlines a shift in perception and engagement with a land that was becoming increasingly intertwined with the Western world. It investigates the perspective of the European artist, which was undoubtedly influenced by ideas of romanticism, marred by prejudice, but was an important one nevertheless, if one is to understand the shaping of Indian visual culture. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication, with a foreword by Dr. Shashi Tharoor and essays by historians Pheroza Godrej and Giles Tillotson. Established in 1993 as an art gallery, DAG is one of India’s leading art companies, with a comprehensive collection starting from the eighteenth century onwards.
Among other initiatives, it restores the legacies of generations of artists marginalised over time, acquires custodianship of artists’ studios and estates and brings back to India works associated with Indian art and heritage from overseas.
It has a publishing calendar with a library of books that document Indian art history; a museums programme; commissions videos and films in relation to artists and their work; and engagement with artists, critics, the art community at large and the public. It works with institutions and museums by hosting exhibitions or for establishing public-private museum exhibitions such as those undertaken at Delhi’s Red Fort (Drishyakala) and Kolkata’s Old Currency Building (Ghare Baire) with the Archaeological Survey of India. Set up as museums, the exhibitions ran for periods of three years and two years, respectively. DAG has galleries in Mumbai, New Delhi and New York.
