Art expo on colonial India opens today
An art exhibition featuring colonial India around the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century opens today for public viewing at the Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar’s gallery.
The three-day exhibition titled ‘India: East/West - The Age of Discovery in late Georgian India as seen through the collections of the Royal Asiatic Society, London’ is curated by Jochen Sokoly and Alison Ohta.
India: East-West looks at a critical period in the history of colonial India at the end of the 18th/beginning of the 19th centuries when ideas of the enlightenment brought about a quest to discover the geography, natural habitat, history, cultures and architecture of the Indian subcontinent through a discourse between the scholarly elites of British colonialists and their Indian subjects.
Administrators and representatives of the East India Company were involved in projects to map India’s history, culture and environment, and collect and record their findings. In doing so they employed both British artists who had ventured to India in search of opportunities, as well as Indian artists who had been employed by local rulers and their studios.
This resulted in an artistic exchange that altered traditions of Indian painting and exposed British artists to new subjects.
The beginning of the study of India in the Western academic tradition resulted in the formation of new centres of learning in the late 18th century, such as the Asiatic Society of Bengal and its British counterpart, the Royal Asiatic Society in London, which has lent the works to the exhibition.
The works - paintings, drawings and prints - are from three prominent collections within the Society: that of Sir William Jones, a scholar of Sanskrit and botany, Ram Raz, a historian of Hindu architecture, and James Tod, a historian of Rajasthan.
Among the artists featured in the exhibition are William and Thomas Daniell, George Chinnery, and the Company school painter Zayn Al Din. Many of their works are exhibited for the first time.
The exhibits open with a lecture today at 6.30pm at the VCUQ Atrium followed by a reception at 7.30pm. The gallery is open Sundays to Thursdays, 9am to 5pm or by prior appointment.
-GT
