The Western heritage

It is mainly British. It comprises paintings by British and European painters who came to Calcutta between 1770 and 1850. They came for a number of reasons: in search of the exotic and the picturesque, impelled by a spirit of adventure and, of course to seek fame and fortune.

The first notable British painter to arrive in Calcutta in 1869 was Tilly Kettle. Apart from portraits, he painted heroic scenes in India. After Kettle came William Hodges who lived in Calcutta mostly and from 1778 to 1783. His works include two volumes; Select Views of India (1786) and Travels in India (1793). He was also the first foreign painter to depict a Calcutta scene: a view of the Calcutta harbour from the Fort William. The city of Calcutta was then confined mainly to the present BBD Bagh (the Dalhousie square) and was like a miniature tropical London. Under Warren Hastings it became the political, economic and cultural capital of India. Possibly the most famous painter to visit India was JohannesZoffariy who reached Calcutta in 1783. Zoffany's principal works include portraits of, celebrities such as Warren Hastings and his wife, Sir Elizah Impey, conversation pieces such as Colonel Polier with Claude Martin and others among whom he included himself, Col Mordaunts's Cock Fight etc. A superb altarpiece depicting the Last Supper, his last major painting in India, can be seen in St. John's Church in Calcutta.

We now come to the uncle-and-nephew team of Thomas and William Daniell who are still regarded as the most famous among all British and European painters in India. The two Daniells remain inextricably mingled in their works. Their Twelve Views of Calcutta done with the newly invented technique of acquatint, presented the first documentation of European Calcutta; its streets, houses, the riverfront and also three scenes of the 'Black Town'. The Daniells' major opus, Oriental Scenery was a six-part double-elephant folio of 144 paintings (1808). It succeeded in acquainting the British with grand visual panorama of India: its natural scenic splendours, its magnificent monuments and its colourful people. The next painter to depict Calcutta was Capt William Baillie whose twelve city scenes were done in the 1790s. The Victoria Memorial Hall in Calcutta contains the largest number of the Daniell paintings in the world.

While European Calcutta remained the main theme of the; British painters, a shift occurred with the arrival on the scene of Balthazar 6QJvyns, a Franco-Belgian artist. He spent the greater part of this stay from 1794 to 1798 to paint the colourful life of the 'Indian' Calcutta. His great work Les Hindous with 288 plates and text in French and English, was published in Paris (1808-12). Les Hindous portrays dwellings, temples, mosques, crowded streets and bazaars, the gharries, palanquins, bullock-carts, a vast range of country boats, Hindu festivals and rites, and human portraits which included men and women of every profession: rich men and women and their servants, holy men of diverse sects, street characters, and musicians, all in their distinctive costumes. Without Solvyns, the life of the Indian Calcutta in the 1790s would have remained practically undocumented.

As we enter the nineteenth century, the city had extended southwards along the Chowringhee. The Chowringhee road, facing the Maidan and the new Fort William, was lined with superb buildings including the Town Hall and the magnificent Georgian Government House (now the Raj Bhavan) built by the Marquis of Wellesly between 1799 and 1803, modelled after the Keddleston Hall of the Curzons in Derbyshire. We get a panoramic view of this 'City of Palaces' in William Wood's Twenty-Eight Engravings of Calcutta (1832). Wood drew the buildings from the Baboo Ghat to Dhurramtolla, and from Dhurramtolla the entire stretch of the Chowririghee up to the Lower Circular Road, building by building. "

Shortly after, James Frazer in his Twelve Views of Calcutta depicted its architecture, street scenes and the busy river with boats and ships. Mention next must be made of Sir Charles D'oyly. During his long official career1n India from 1791 to 1838 this amateur painter did a vast range of picture including natural scenes, human characters, scenes of daily life of both Europeans and Indians. His principal work, Calcutta and its Environs was posthumously published in 1848.

Among many other nineteenth century painters were such famous figures as George Chinnery, portraitist and landscapist, Emily Eden, whose main work was Portraits of the Peoples and Princes of India (1844), and Madame Belnos who gave her attention to paint the lives of the Indians. Her claim to fame rests on Sandhya a book on Hindu rituals, and more especially on Twenty Four Plates illustrative of Hindu and European Manners in Bengal (1832).

From the 1850s the emergence of photographs eventually led to the decline of painting by Western artists. But the vast body of works they have left behind represents the richest heritage of colonial art of which a principal repository is the Victoria Memorial Hall in Calcutta.