By 1870, traditional art styles had been killed: Dalrymple

Traditional Indian art began to die when local artists commissioned by the British

East India Company

realised that the more their work resembled European work, the more they would be paid. “The first to realise this was Sita Ram (a local artist),” historian and author William Dalrymple said on Saturday.
Dalrymple was delivering an art history lecture titled “Foreign Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company” at the

India Habitat Centre

here before his exhibition of what is commonly called the Company School of painting opens in England on Tuesday. The names and works of local Indian artists from the 1700s to the late 1800s, hitherto unknown to the world though the men and women who commissioned them generally are, will finally get what all artists desire: a public viewing, and, possibly, recognition.

The historian

said that by the latter half of the 19th-century Indian art had begin to go down and colonial art was becoming the only way to paint. “By 1870, traditional styles had been killed,” he said, adding that there were few survivors, mainly in “uncolonised princely states” as those of Rajasthan.

The story begins when the East India Company (EIC) began to encroach upon India and “squeeze regional courts and Mughal artists who previously worked for the rajahs and nawabs found employment with Company servants”, Dalrymple said. “Never the EIC itself, the Company never used artists as an official body,” he said. Individuals realised their value and began to commission art.