https://indianpedia.org/index.php?action=history&feed=atom&title=Company_styleCompany style - Revision history2026-07-31T08:10:49ZRevision history for this page on the wikiMediaWiki 1.45.4https://indianpedia.org/index.php?title=Company_style&diff=113095&oldid=prev>Whiteguru at 09:47, 19 June 20212021-06-19T09:47:59Z<p></p>
<p><b>New page</b></p><div>{{Short description|School of Indian painting}}<br />
{{use dmy dates|date=September 2020}}<br />
[[File:Group of Courtesans, northern India, 19th century.jpg|thumb|right|300px|''Group of Courtesans'', 1800–1825, {{convert|26|x|31.2|cm|in|abbr=on}} opaque watercolour and gold on paper]]<br />
[[File:Khan Bahadur Khan with men of his clan (6125079998).jpg |thumb|''Khan Bahadur Khan with Men of his Clan'', c. 1815, from the [[Fraser Album]]]] <br />
'''Company style''' or '''Company painting''' (''kampani kalam'' in [[Hindi]]) is a term for a hybrid Indo-European style of paintings made in India by Indian artists, many of whom worked for European patrons in the [[British East India Company]] or other foreign Companies in the 18th and 19th centuries. The style blended traditional elements from [[Rajput]] and [[Mughal painting]] with a more Western treatment of perspective, volume and recession. Most paintings were small, reflecting the Indian [[Miniature (illuminated manuscript)|miniature]] tradition, but the natural history paintings of plants and birds were usually life size.<br />
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==Locations==<br />
Leading centres were the main British settlements of [[Calcutta]], [[Madras]] (Chennai), [[Delhi]], [[Lucknow]], [[Patna]], the [[Maratha]] court of [[Thanjavur]] and [[Bangalore]]. Subjects included portraits, landscapes and views, and scenes of Indian people, dancers and festivals. Series of figures of different [[caste]]s or trades were particular favourites, with an emphasis on differences in costume; now they are equally popular as subjects for analysis by historians of the imperialist mentality. Portfolios of animal or botanical subjects were also commissioned, and some erotic subjects. Architectural subjects were popular, usually done in a detailed and frontal style more like that of an architectural draftsman than the Romanticised style used by most European painters visiting India. The techniques varied, but mostly drew on Western watercolour technique, from which "transparency of texture, soft tones and modelling in broad strokes" were borrowed.<ref>Linda Leach in George Mitchell (ed.), ''In the Image of Man, The Indian Perception of the Universe through 2000 years of painting and sculpture'', Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1982, {{ISBN|0-7287-0311-4}}</ref><br />
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==Patrons and artists==<br />
[[File:Great Indian Fruit Bat MET DP167067.jpg|thumb|''Great Indian Fruit Bat'' ([[Pteropus giganteus]]), [[Bhawani Das]] or follower, 1777–82, from Mary Impey's album of natural history paintings]]<br />
Large-scale patrons included Colonel [[James Skinner (East India Company officer)|James Skinner]] of Skinner's Horse fame, who had a [[Rajput]] mother, and for natural history paintings, [[Mary Impey]], wife of [[Elijah Impey]], who commissioned over three hundred, and the [[Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley|Marquess Wellesley]], brother of the [[Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington|first Duke of Wellington]], who had over 2,500. There were equivalent movements, but much smaller, around the French and Portuguese possessions in India, and in other South Asian areas like [[Burma]] and [[Ceylon]].<br />
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The French-born Major-General [[Claude Martin]] (1735–1800), latterly based in [[Lucknow]], commissioned 658 paintings of birds, including ''[[Black Stork in a Landscape]]'', now in the [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]] in New York.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/454011|title=Black Stork in a Landscape|website=The Metropolitan Museum of Art, i.e. The Met Museum|language=en|access-date=2018-05-25}}</ref><br />
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Some notable artists include [[Mazhar Ali Khan (painter)|Mazhar Ali Khan]], who worked on Thomas Metcalfe's [[Delhi Book]], and was part of a dynasty of miniature artists, the patriarch of whom, [[Ghulam Ali Khan]], had worked for [[William Fraser (British India civil servant)|William Fraser]] on a similar commission known as the [[Fraser Album]], considered a masterpiece. He, like his uncle [[Ghulam Murtaza Khan]], also painted portraits of the last Mughal emperors and their courts.<br />
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==Material==<br />
[[File:Green-Winged-Macaw.jpg|thumb|right|220px|''A Green-Winged Macaw'', folio, {{convert|89.5|x|56.8|cm|in|abbr=on}}, from Mary Impey's album of natural history paintings, Attributed by inscription to Shaikh Zain al-Din, Calcutta, about 1780, opaque watercolor on paper.]]<br />
Paintings were mostly on paper, but sometimes on [[ivory]], especially those from Delhi. They were mostly intended to be kept in portfolios or albums; the [[muraqqa]] or album was very well established among Indian collectors, though usually including [[calligraphy]] as well, as least in Muslim examples. The style developed in the second half of the 18th century, and by the early nineteenth century production was at a considerable level, with many of the cheaper paintings being copied by rote. By the 19th century many artists had shops to sell the work and workshops to produce it.<br />
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==Decline==<br />
The arrival of [[photography]] was a direct blow for the style, but it survived into the 20th century, Ishwari Prasad of [[Patna]], who died in 1950, being perhaps the last notable exponent. In the late 19th century the British established several Schools of Art, where a yet more Westernised version of the style was taught, later in competition with other styles.<br />
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<gallery widths="180px" heights="200px"><br />
File:Portrait of East India Company official.jpg|East India Company official and servants, perhaps William Fullerton of Rosemount, surgeon and mayor of [[Calcutta]] in 1757<br />
File:Five Recruits- Ummee Chund, Indur, Goolzaree, Bukhtawur and Juhaz - Google Art Project.jpg|''Five Recruits- Ummee Chund, Indur, Goolzaree, Bukhtawur and Juhaz'', 1815-16<br />
File:Akbar's Tomb at Sikandra by Sheikh Latif, c. 1810-1820, watercolor .JPG|[[Akbar's Tomb]] at Sikandra, [[Sheikh Latif]], c. 1810-1820<br />
File:Watercolour painting on paper of Indradyumna seated in a carriage.jpg|[[Indradyumna]] in a carriage, early 19th century<br />
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</gallery><br />
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==References==<br />
{{commons category}}<br />
{{reflist}}<br />
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==Further reading==<br />
*Archer, Mildred and William G., ''Indian Painting for the British, 1770–1880'' (1955)<br />
*Archer, Mildred. ''Company Paintings: Indian Paintings of the British Period''. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1992. {{ISBN|0944142303}}.<br />
*Welch, Stuart Cary. ''Room for Wonder: Indian Court Painting during the British Period, 1760–1880''. Exhibition catalogue. New York: American Federation of Arts, 1978. {{ISBN|0847801764}}.<br />
*{{cite book |author=Kossak , Steven | title=''Indian court painting, 16th-19th century.'' | location=New York | publisher=The Metropolitan Museum of Art | year=1997| isbn=0870997831 | url=http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15324coll10/id/12335/rec/74 }} (see index: p. 148-152)<br />
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==External links==<br />
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20050711075630/http://www.iniva.org/archive/resource/1514 INVA article]<br />
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20051120153014/http://images.vam.ac.uk/ixbin/hixclient.exe?_IXSPFX_=summary%2Fb 45 images] from the [[V&A]]<br />
*[http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cpin/hd_cpin.htm Sardar, Marika. “Company Painting in Nineteenth-Century India.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 2004]<br />
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[[Category:British East India Company]]<br />
[[Category:Schools of Indian painting]]</div>>Whiteguru