A Family album

The colours are that of dawn. Morning light,like a knife,slices through hanging banyan roots. The spire of a temple gathers most of the early light to rise like an ancient ghost in a dreamlike landscape.

The colours are that of dawn. Morning light,like a knife,slices through hanging banyan roots. The spire of a temple gathers most of the early light to rise like an ancient ghost in a dreamlike landscape. The frame is infused with solitude so profound that you are compelled to feel mellow. There must be a story behind it,you tell yourself before you walk away.

A few paces away,is a painting called Bibaha. Men with alien-like oblong,tonsured heads populate the frame. In the middle is a man with what looks like a ceremonial headgear. Facing him is a veiled figure. Actually,it will not be entirely accurate to describe it as a veiled figure because there is no way to figure out if there is anything beneath the veil. Behind them,peering through a window is a group of ghostly figures in white who look like they have walked out of the frame of Edvard Munchs Scream.

The paintings mentioned above are just two of the many works on display at the exhibition called Indian Life and Landscape by Western Artist at the Victoria Memorial ,but they more than adequately represent the shifting attitudes that coloured Western perception of India throughout the 1700s to early 20th century.

The first painting was by William Daniell who arrived in India in 1786,aged only sixteen,in the company of his uncle Thomas Daniell. He was here along with his uncle to execute engravings of Indian life and culture. The painting described above is a prototype of the Daniell duo. A painstakingly detailed depiction of an old ruined structure in an evocative atmosphere. But its to the credit of Daniell that it manages to include the overwhelming sense of wonder that must have engulfed this teeenaged English boy,as he stoof before thise alien structure.

On the other hand,the second painting by the Flemish artist François Balthazar Solvyns who lived in Calcutta from 1791 to 1803,represents the Western need to project Indian in all its strangeness. Bibaha (Wedding) is a depiction of a typical 18th century Bengali wedding,with the groom in a topor and Brahmin priests administering the ritual. However,Solvyns representation of the scene is so bizarre that even a person well versed with Bengali rituals will find it hard to understand what exactly is happening in the scene. Its probably through images like this that the otherness of India was established by the Europeans,with hidden messages deriding the Indian way of life. Incidentally,Slovyns collection of etchings of was long considered to be an important source of information by many historians. Even Bibaha,for all its bizarreness,provides us with compelling socio-political portrait of 18th century Bengal. The Brahminical order is firmly established in this artwork as is the position of the widows (the spectre-like figures in the background).

Indeed,it is almost impossible to ignore the Colonial ideologies associated with the works on display at the exhibition. Some of the painters whose works are being displayed in the exhibition,like George Chinnery and Samuel Howitt,never even visited the country. But one must also realize that this exhibition is l invaluable because it is,as Jawahar Sircar (secretary to the ministry of culture) said at the opening night of the exhibition,a family album One must check out these painting simply to find out what our country was like,before the advent of camera.

The works on display at the Victoria Memorial are from the collection of Victoria & Albert Museum (London).The exhibition is on till January 31,2010

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