British colonialism in India and the visual arts
Apurba Chatterjee
An Empire of Images: Visual Culture and the British in India, 1688–1815
Cambridge University Press 2025, pp361, £95, ISBN 9781009567190
Subodh Kumar
Apurba Chatterjee’s An Empire of Images: Visual Art and the British, 1688–1815 is meticulously researched and cogently argued, and examines British colonialism through the lens of the visual arts – rather than textual archives – in the formative years of the East India Company (EIC) in India. When discussing the EIC régime, scholars predominantly rely on commercial, economic, and military evidence to write colonial political history. Chatterjee, however, adopts a cultural perspective, mainly artworks produced by both British and Indian artists, in order to understand how the British established their political legitimacy. As such, she fills a gap in the visual history of late 17th- and 18th-century India, and scholarly attention has been paid less to this period, as historians have focused more on the mid-19th century (p8). Chatterjee not only analyses art images: she highlights complex relationships between colonial officials and Indian elites.
Focusing upon Indian landscapes, people’s lives, and natural history, Chatterjee argues that the visual arts assisted the British in defining their political attitudes and in developing their colonial knowledge. At the same time, she contends that visual images and artworks played a key role in depicting differences through the juxtaposition of the societies of both coloniser and colonised. Within visual representations, British officials came to appear as supreme authorities, and Indians deemed of secondary importance. Visual paintings not only became a means to demonstrate colonial difference – India and Britain in terms of ideas, culture, society and polity – but also of expressing the British ‘self-image’ in front of the Indian ruling classes (pp16–18).
The book is divided into four chapters, including an introduction and a conclusion. The author shows that British artists viewed the work of Indian artists as two-dimensional and lacking in design and harmony. Nonetheless, in some cases, Indian arts were admired and even copied by the British, which resulted in a kind of rivalry between them (p6). The author has taken care to consider paintings prepared by Indian artists that are ignored by scholars whose chief attention has been on British artists working in India, and this is one of the major strengths of the book.
In adopting an art-historical methodology and approach, Chatterjee’s book focuses on how the British shifted their intention from fashioning a political legacy towards celebrating the lived experiences of both the colonial and the native population, although this development actually helped them in their determination to maintain order in the country. The first chapter begins with the ideas of ‘Romanticism’, ‘European Enlightenment’ and ‘Western Rationality’ as displayed through the art of colonial artists. These ideas had already spread in England and were brought to India by EIC officials. Colonial artists viewed India as exotic and strange, a land of marvel where despotic rulership, the practices of the Hindu religion, and complete subordination of the local populace by individual rulers were prevalent. These features of Indian society as represented in the country’s visual arts provided an insight for the British into how India could be managed and governed.
Visiting artists were fascinated by the distinctive character of India and so portrayed scenery, trees, and lakes, representations that became popular among colonial officials. At the same time, they adopted an elite perspective in their representation of colonial society, focusing on the attire of rulers and wealthy communities such as baniyas (the mercantile classes). In addition, artists recorded the newly established EIC factories, which became a symbol of British economic and commercial power in India. Pictures of this kind naturally signified colonial power but also stability in the subcontinent (pp57–66).
The second chapter takes as its theme the coercion of the colonised and the perception of racial hierarchies existing between the British and Indian population, colonial political power, and ideas of British nationhood. Nevertheless, British artists continued to portray Indian royalty, and this chapter resonates with the entanglements of both colonial and Indian artists and political changes under British rule. While inquiring into Indian civilisation, such as customs, languages, culture and manners, colonial artists inevitably, it would seem, came to depict notions of racial difference. They portrayed Indian people as ‘black’, even turning darker complexions into symbols of darkness and poverty (p80).
William Hodges, Benjamin West, Edward Penny, and Tilly Kettle were leading colonial artists who portrayed the EIC in ways that demonstrated the Company had the potential and the capacity to rule India politically, in ways that, it thought, the native rulers could not. Artists enhanced this view so that, for example, Lord Clive, a member of the EIC, is portrayed as a hero and a powerful soldier, whereas Indian emperors such as Tipu Sultan and Akbar II were painted in such a way as to suggest that they were intolerant and tyrannical. In marked contrast, however, native Indian artists glorified their rulers and depicted them as their guardians, who wielded a great deal of moral authority and social prestige (p100).
Artists also framed British families’ social and cultural lives in images. Most British women were either mothers or wives who came to India with their male partners, playing their part within the colonial structure in caring for children – and for families more generally – in the context of their homes, and this is how they were shown. But Indian women were painted either as concubines or servants who worked in British households. In a rather similar way, local customs and manners were selectively depicted by artists so that, for example, the practice of the Hindu sati system (a widow immolating herself on her deceased husband’s funeral pyre) tended to be recorded, and such depictions identified Indian society as barbaric and backward – imagery that fed a colonial bias.
The final chapter analyses landscape paintings in which the ever-expanding rule of the British is portrayed, as they captured more and more Indian lands and territories. The author highlights three main subjects that emerge in paintings and miniatures: first, ruins and remnants of monuments and territories to define India’s past and history before the British arrived; secondly, representations of venues where wars and struggles took place between Indian rulers and colonial troops; lastly, the delineation of emerging British centres of power, notably Calcutta (Eastern India), Madras (South India), and Bombay (Western India ) (p160). The towns of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay became presidencies and were depicted as fresh and newly built venues, and Fort William at Calcutta, for example, which was built in 1696, is made to appear the epitome of colonial nobility and power.
The different techniques and skills of Indian and British artists, as well as their different preoccupations, are visible in their portrayal of Indian monuments and sites. Indian artists such as Sita Ram accepted the decline of native rulers and the expansion of colonial power, but the extent to which artists such as he chose to depict decay and ruins was limited, in marked contrast with their British counterparts. Rather, Indian artists celebrated festivities, music, and classic poetic genres (p179): importantly, such native artists worked under colonial officials.
The last chapter is the crux of the book. It explores Indian flora and fauna through the work of both Indian and British artists, which was closely linked to colonial policymaking, because officials needed to collect information about plant and animal species that would help them rule India effectively (pp221–22). To make visual imagery of flora and fauna, native artists demonstrated their agency more than their British counterparts when officials commissioned them for artistic work. Shaikh Zain-al-Din, Bhavani Das, and Ramdas were leading Indians, working under their colonial masters (pp230, 240). Indian artists painted in great detail through the use of opaque watercolour whereas British artists only used watercolour in its translucent form (p242). Several private individuals such as James Forbus, Lady Mary Impey, William Jones and Lord Wellsley, went beyond the interests of just serving colonial political power and legitimacy, through their work in preserving and maintaining nature.
To conclude, Chatterjee offers an alternative way to understand colonial history through visual archives and images. Artworks and images served as a medium and a language express to colonial power. Visual imagery became a ‘method’ that aided the British in their understanding of India but also in their capacity to rule the country.