BENGALURU: It’s never a dull show when writer and historian William Dalrymple takes on the dais to talk about his most passionate subject, Indian history.
In town on Saturday to give a talk on the book, The Forgotten Masters, which has been edited by him, Dalrymple introduced it as a “celebration of the work of a series of extraordinary Indian artists”, each of them having their own style.
In attendance at the Bangalore International Centre were some well-known names like theatre person Arundhati Nag and Vinita Bali, who recently joined Cognizant as an independent director.
The book was published to coincide with the first UK exhibition of Indian masterworks at The Wallace Collection.
“To me, these are some of the best Mughal artworks ever produced and were not known to public. I wanted to give life and biographies to the artist who has been producing some of these extraordinary paintings. Three of the paintings in my collection are part of the exhibition, however I wish I owned all of them,” says Dalrymple, who has been working on for almost 30 years.
The artists mentioned in the book worked for British patrons from the 1770s till the end of the Mughal rule in 1857. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Indian artists were employed mainly by the British East India Company to record picturesque sites, monuments, flora and fauna.
The collection mentions historically overlooked artists, including Shaikh Zain ud-Din, Bhawani Das, Shaikh Mohammad Amir of Karriah, Sita Ram and Ghulam Ali Khan, whose art works give a glimpse of the fusion of British and Indian styles in painting. They mostly shed light on the beauty of social reality of that time. While most of the artists hail from regions of Delhi, Haryana and Bengal,
Dalrymple mentioned that some regions were not covered. “We didn’t do Tanjore, however there is a mention of Yellapah of Vellore, which is closer to the Tanjore style. The idea was to cover the clearest masterpieces and we have also tried to explore more of white background paintings,” he says.
The artists were also commissioned by the East India Company to paint images of dancers, soldiers, craftspeople, villagers, princes, courtiers, festivities and even a regular day. The paintings also show images of habitants from the countryside of New Delhi and Haryana, he added.
An out-of-the-ordinary exhibition
Situated in London, Wallace Collection is a national museum which displays art collected in the 18th and 19th centuries by Sir Richard Wallace. It was later passed on to the British nation by Sir Richard’s widow, Lady Wallace, in 1897.
Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company, which was curated by William Dalrymple, showcases some of the unseen art by Indian artist who were commissioned by East India Company. The exhibition will be on till April 19 at Wallace Collection, London.