Patronage in Colonial India

Profound changes took place in patronage patterns after the decline of the Mughal Empire in 18th century A.D. The century witnessed the declining fortunes of the courts, resulting in changing forms of relationship between the artists and their patrons in individual and institutional spheres. The patronage of artists by individual aristocrats entered a decline while a new ground was being prepared by changing tastes of new patrons. In a globalization of culture, the period witnessed a dialectical between colonialism and nationalism, as India responded to the new cultural influences.

The year 1757 A.D changed the course of Indian history with the East India Company gaining control in Bengal. In less than a century, a small colony was turned into an empire. Impetuses from the Industrial Revolution, scientific achievements and progress contributed to a sense of superiority of the British that became the hallmark of the Empire. As with colonialism elsewhere, here too, the British extended patronage to projects of collecting and organizing Indian knowledges, surveying her monuments and archaeological sites, mapping her territories, conducting censuses, profiling ethnic groups and even collecting and listing all architectural elements of India’s past architecture. These exercises highlight a particular colonial construct of a link between knowledge and power. As elsewhere, it meant for the colonial state to know the ruled better, so that one could control better.

This British obsession with defining and preserving India’s past that emanated from the link of knowledge and power, as a result, led to a colonial aesthetic that was an aesthetic of difference, of distance, of subordination and control. In architecture, the aesthetic demanded that ancient monuments be preserved, in a half ruined state, so that the colonial state was then highlighted in its role as a surveyor and conservator of these ‘fallen glories’. The Indo-Saracenic style that they patronized combined the ‘disassembled’ elements of Indian architecture with the Gothic, an architecture that served their imperial vision. The patronage of architecture of New Delhi shows how the British shaped Indian conception of the past and how they turned India’s architectural heritage to the service of the Raj. In the art of painting, the art schools and academies were meant to disseminate western ideals through art education, ostensibly to preserve her artistic tradition and to ‘improve’ her tastes.

One of the most powerful cultural impacts of the British Empire was a change in artistic taste. The impact of European academic naturalism changed all aspects of Indian arts from working practices to relationships between artists and patrons. With the introduction of Victorian illusionistic art, new forms of oil portraits, naturalistic landscapes and depiction of day to day life in the genre of painting emerged. The old artists now produced low quality works, having compromised on material with the declining fortunes of their patrons. However, not all art was poor, for Patna and Murshidabad artists produced some fine works under court patronage, thus forming a bridge between the patronage of East India Company and the medieval courts.

The Company and its residents commissioned paintings of Indian flora and fauna, carriages, residences, domestic servants, pets and aspects of English life in Kolkata. These artists who were now in demand were trained in western techniques, distinct from the painters of traditional miniatures. They patronized ethnographic subjects, like paintings of Indian castes, tribes and of various occupations.

Meanwhile the rise of Kolkata as an urban centre drew village scroll painters (patuas) to the city, to the pilgrim centre, Kalighat. Not appreciated by the Bengal and British elite, these patuas became the first truly popular Indian art, patronized by the public, marking the rise of popular audiences. With the introduction of mechanical production, like printing, these Kalighat paintings became a must for popular consumption.

By the middle of 19th century CE, the tastes of the elite had become Victorian. As traditional arts declined, patrons changed, the connoisseurs turned to collecting western art and sitting for portraits by European artists. Yet formally, the Company did not move on a project to ‘improve’ Indian tastes till 1850’s. But by 1854, the East India Company embarked on a project to ‘improve’ Indian tastes by opening art schools and societies. Three art schools, with syllabi patterned on London art schools, were set up in Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai, marking the rise of academic or salon art.

Academic art inaugurated an era of individualism of the artist in the true sense and not in the Mughal way, when the artists first time had begun to inscribe their names and signatures. Artists now depended heavily on exhibitions, in an atmosphere of an art-conscious public. Art societies, after the admission of Indians, turned into tools of British patronage, promoting the interests of growing community of academic artists. Annual exhibitions were held by these societies in different seasons in Shimla, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune and Chennai that were attended by huge crowds. The most celebrated of these artists was Raja Ravi Verma, prized and patronized both by the Raj and the Indian elite. However, the new patronage pattern turned out to be a mixed bag, for the artist lost the economic security of aristocratic patronage, while his sales at art shows were unpredictable.

This shift in the patronage patterns, from private to public sphere, happened against a background of westernization and nationalism. The British patronage of academic art was challenged by a demand for a swadeshi (indigenous) ideology of art, spearheaded by the Tagores. The emergence of the Bengal school of art (late 19th century A.D) a cultural nationalism after the Partition of Bengal (1905 A.D) targeted academic art so patronized by the British. This demand for a new style, however, could not change the patterns of patronage, for the artist now was patronized by the public and institutions, which was unalterable.