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A canvas for the unobvious

Nothing quite lands us right in the midst of colonial India, especially of the 18th and 19th centuries, as those countless prints and drawings that artists from Britain and Europe kept producing here.

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BN Goswamy

Unlike his fellow British artists, George Chinnery was not interested in rendering topographical scenes. He wanted to feel the pulse of the land, and that is what set him apart

I stood a wondering stranger at the Ghaut,
And, gazing round, beheld the pomp of spires
And palaces, to view like magic brought:
All glittering in the sun-beam. Man’s desires
Are here superbly pampered,

— From James Atkinson, The City of Palaces, Calcutta, 1824

Nothing quite lands us right in the midst of colonial India, especially of the 18th and 19th centuries, as those countless prints and drawings that artists from Britain and Europe kept producing here. In them one sees what it must have been like to view this vast land of ours — with its maddening variety of people and places, and monuments and terrains, through alien, unaccustomed eyes. For those who came here to these parts, whether as professionals or as gifted amateurs, everything must have been a spectacle: great monuments beginning to moulder and decay, strangely clad men and women bustling about around ghats and in alleys, trades that had all but died out in their own lands plying everywhere with zest, rituals and celebrations of strange character being observed in town-squares and on green fields. Bheesties (water-carriers) and hookah-burdars (huqqa-bearers), mehtars (sweepers) and masalchis (torch-bearers), nor bullock carts and palkis, might have been engaged by everyone who came out here, but they were certainly around: there to be observed and recorded. Piles of pictures were produced, not all of them — although many — were of high quality, and they are all worth paying attention to. Pheroza Godrej, untiring collector and connoisseur, has known this for years as did Pauline Rohatgi, her ‘friend, philosopher, and guide’, and, before them, the likes of the gentle and studious Mildred Archer. Over the years they have drawn our attention to these ‘treasures’ through books and exhibitions, and one learns from them each time.

In many ways, the recently concluded exhibition — curated by Pheroza Godrej — at the Prince of Wales Museum (re-named the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya), was different from others before it, for it focussed exclusively on prints and drawings that related to Calcutta. Kolkata Through Colonial Eyes is how it was titled, and not everything in it was from the 200 prints she and Pauline had gifted to the Museum some four years ago. Her own essay and catalogue of the exhibition apart, Pheroza had asked other experts to contribute to the volume. And through their eyes too one sees a lot. One knew of course of the Daniells and Prinsep, of Zoffany and Hodges, of Fraser and D’Oyly. But I was especially drawn to learning about George Chinnery — ‘the picturesque artist par excellence’ of Losty’s description; ‘one of the greatest of British Imperial artists’ of William Dalrymple’s; and ‘my friend, and one of my masters’ of Fraser’s — on whom Patrick Conner wrote in the volume.

A man of undoubted talent, Chinnery (1774-1852), who landed in India in 1802, was a bit of a puzzle. As someone, reviewing a relevantly recent exhibition of his works in England, wrote: ‘To us, the experience of empire may have been about power, commerce, and occupation. To many British people at the time it was more a matter of escape, from poverty, family or creditors. In the case of the artist George Chinnery, it seems to have been a combination of all three.’ Even though he did not begin his career in India by landing in Calcutta, the premier city of the British, he, soon after coming there, became ‘an integral part of the city’s expatriate social life’. This, of course, apart from being recognised as a master painter and much sought after by young, especially amateur, artists as a mentor. Interestingly, however, Chinnery was not as interested in rendering topographical scenes as so many other artists were, nor especially in portraits which he was extremely good at and which could fetch instant money. Of far greater interest to him was feeling the pulse of the land where he now was. This he liked to do though portraying “figures bathing in the river, thatched huts with chattars inserted into the wall, village watchmen, bullock carts, covered boats on the Hooghly River, charpoys and chatties, overgrown tombs …’, in Conner’s words.

Like many other artists of his time, however, Chinnery had the unfortunate tendency to run into debts: serious debts, sometimes. He was a Freemason, but not much solace came from that source. He began at one time to live in slovenly quarters that were not considered ‘appropriate’ by the ‘sahibs’. On occasions, he would try and seek help from friends and officials. Circumstances made him move from place to place in a hurry sometimes. He even left India for China, painting portraits and street scenes and landscapes there, and spent years in Macau, the place where he died eventually. But he kept working all the time: drawings, lithographs, and painting. One of the works that he is most remembered, and admired, for is the portrait he made of the two young children of James Kirkpatrick, who was British Resident to the Nizam of Hyderabad, and had gone on to fall in love with and marry the great niece of the Nizam’s chief minister: a great beauty who bore the name Khair-un-Nisa. The portrait of the young children — brother and sister — was made during the time when they were going to be parted from their parents, forever perhaps, owing to a turn in circumstances, and is imbued with ‘a sympathy rarely seen in portraiture’. In his White Mughals, which William Dalrymple wrote essentially with the Kirkpatrick family at its centre, calls the painting of these children ‘one of the masterpieces of British painting in India’, and describes it beautifully. After speaking of the setting, and the lovely dresses that the siblings wear, he says: “…while, Sahib Allum (the young boy) looks directly at the viewer with an almost precocious confidence and assurance, Sahib Begum (his sister) looks down with an expression of infinite sadness and vulnerability on her face, her little eyes dark and swollen with crying”.

Chinnery ‘clearly understood the intense sadness of separation’, he adds. All this in the midst of “A prodigy of power, transcending all/The conquests, and the governments of old,/An empire of the sun, a gorgeous realm of gold”, in Atkinson’s description of Calcutta.

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