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 Solyvn's
India is not the idealized antiquity of the Orientalists
but the daily life of India as he observed and
experienced it. The task he sets for himself is to
provide an accurate and “faithful” portrayal of a people
who have been inadequately represented in European
descriptions of India.
Solvyns and the Company School
In the late eighteenth century, Indian artists began to
paint for Europeans in India, combining European and
Indian styles in what came to be known as the “Company
School.”
Indian
artists were employed by the East India Company as
draftsmen and instructed in European techniques; others
worked as assistants to European artists, like Solvyns;
and many had the opportunity to see, study, and copy
European prints that were sold in the shops and bazaars
of Calcutta and other urban centres. Of the European
artists in India, Hodges and Solvyns exercised the
greatest influence on the character of Company painting
in Bengal.
Hodge’s influence is evident in the work of several
Calcutta and Murshidabad artists, but they had only his
prints to study. Solvyns provided some artists “a more
direct association.”
The
subjects favored by patrons were costumes; occupations
and trades (each shown with its identifying attributes-a
weaver at his loom; a potter at his wheel); domestic
servants; ascetics; modes of transport; and festivals.
Distinctive of Solvyns’s work – “ tall brooding figures,
sombre colors and heavy black borders.”
The paintings, c. 1798-1804, are by an unknown Calcutta
artist, perhaps from Murshidabad. Among them is a
watercolor portraying the worship at a Kali temple at
Titaghar, near Calcutta. Solvyns’s influence on the
artist is clearly evident...
(The paintings, c. 1798-1804, are by an unknown
Calcutta artist, perhaps from Murshidabad. Among them is
a watercolor portraying the worship at a Kali temple at
Titaghar, near Calcutta. Solvyns’s influence on the
artist is clearly evident...)
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