To the average museum-goer, a work such as William Hodges’ 1786 A View of the South side of the Fort of Gwalior is likely dull. Even in art history classes, it is not entirely unusual for a professor to express their apathy towards figureless fields and predictable skylines. These works do, however, yield a great deal of information about the ways in which groups of people within certain times observed and connected with their environment. Further, picturesque works of then-colonized landscapes offer considerable insights into the colonial mind.
Soft-ground etching and aquatint on paper, Delhi Art Gallery
The way I was taught to understand British “picturesque” landscapes of India was through the lens of colonialism. Before the invention and popularization of photography, these images, accurate or not, were how regular British citizens were able to conceptualize the empire abroad. India’s environment was perceived as it was through these idealized paintings that conveniently ignored the brutality of colonialism and any sense of supposed “modernity” amongst the colonized. My comprehension in the classroom was evidently informed by Edward Said’s Orientalism, a work so discussed and dissected there is no need for me to regurgitate its now-widely accepted theories as truths. I wouldn’t say I was taught to be dismissive of picturesque works, but rather to see them as images with heightened artistic license, which, more often than not, served a colonial agenda.
It’s important to note that the genre of picturesque Indian landscapes amongst the British was, in essence, founded by colonial military officers. Francis Swain Ward, a soldier in the Madras Army in the 1750s and 1760s, was the first British artist to have landscapes of India publicly exhibited in England.1 Ward famously sold ten paintings to the British East India Company for display in their London headquarters. Furthermore, William Hodges, perhaps the most renowned 18th century picturesque painter of India, has an exceptionally imperialist history. Hodges was an official artist aboard Captain James Cook’s second voyage to the South Pacific, and his paintings from the expedition established him as a colonial landscape painter long before he set foot in India.2
In his book Artificial Empire, G.H.R. Tillotson advocates for a less dominantly Saidian approach to Hodges’ oeuvre, emphasizing the importance of formal elements in addition to “ideological” contexts.3 However, especially in regards to an artist like Hodges, the colonial legacy cannot be ignored. English artists in the 18th century were solely enabled to travel to, and paint, India through the British East India Company’s colonial domination (and in the late 19th century, Crown Rule). The men who pioneered painting India in this style were military officers, whose careers were premised on the rule and exploitation of the Indian people. How then, is it possible to view these works as objective when they were painted by active colonizers themselves? Tillotson argues “the picturesque is political only in the sense that it declines to address social realities.”4 But the use of the word “only” is misleading, as it assumes this absence of reality has no consequence. These works were often claimed to be authentic representations of South Asia in the West, informing and supplementing stereotypes that persist to this day.
Soft-ground etching and aquatint on paper, Delhi Art Gallery
A more recent trend in art historical analysis is to treat what is not seen as equally important as what is seen. Students like myself are encouraged to take note of absences and recognize the conscious decision made by the artist to include or exclude elements in their work. The picturesque landscapes of India tend to be bereft of people, or they are small enough to be faceless. Their inclusion is merely decorative, and scarcely accurate. Such a critique was likely (subconsciously) inspired by Linda Nochlin’s “The Imaginary Orient.”
Nochlin’s famed chapter in The Politics of Vision has formed the basis for discussions of Orientalism in art history classes. Applying Said’s work to the field of art history, she brought awareness to key absences in textbook 19th century Orientalist paintings, Jean-Léon Gérôme’s The Snake Charmer among them. She cited the absence of history, Western presence, industry and supposed modernity, as well as the gap between art and reality. My aim here is not to merely recite Nochlin’s words, but propose their relation to this genre of painting in colonial India. Thus I am drawn to her assertion that “the very notion of the picturesque in its nineteenth-century manifestations is premised on the fact of destruction.”5 Nochlin elaborates:
“Only on the brink of destruction, in the course of incipient modification and cultural dilution, are customs, costumes, and religious rituals of the dominated finally seen as picturesque. Reinterpreted as the precious remnants of disappearing ways of life, worth hunting down and preserving, they are finally transformed into subjects of aesthetic delectation in an imagery in which exotic human beings are integrated with a presumably defining and overtly limiting decor” 6
While Nochlin wrote of 19th century Orientalism, this trend appeared in different forms before the turn of the century. In A View of a Hill Village in the District of Baugelepoor, Hodges presents a remote society, the kind that was seemingly lost to industrialization. A lone figure sits in the foreground, the angle and shadows obscuring any distinguishing features. The cluster of huts in the middle ground adheres to Western stereotypes, while the composition is almost entirely devoid of people. Notably in picturesque views of rivers and temples, British artists were wary of including the hordes of pilgrims that flocked to the sites. Perhaps in low doses, brown bodies were “picturesque” to British eyes. As the colonizers swept across the subcontinent, they declared rural village life outdated, and their “civilizing mission” ultimately rendered village residents as quaint antiques.
“Only on the brink of destruction, in the course of incipient modification and cultural dilution, are customs, costumes, and religious rituals of the dominated finally seen as picturesque. Reinterpreted as the precious remnants of disappearing ways of life, worth hunting down and preserving, they are finally transformed into subjects of aesthetic delectation in an imagery in which exotic human beings are integrated with a presumably defining and overtly limiting decor”
Linda Nochlin, The Politics of Vision
Despite her apparent criticism, Nochlin did not cast out Orientalist works due to their offenses; rather, she did the opposite. She embraced what they bring to the table, the different disciplines they can inform, and what they say about our past. It is with that attitude that we can begin to explore a more nuanced, multi-faceted reading of picturesque India. Thus, it would be irresponsible to suggest that British art of India is of no value to the art historical canon, nor should it be understood as truth.
Featured image: Landscape at Firozabad, northern India. Coloured etching by William Hodges, 1788 is marked with CC0 1.0.
Notes
- Howes, Jennifer. 2023. “Landscape and Imperialism.” In The Art of a Corporation: The East India Company as Patron and Collector, 1600–1860. 51-77. United Kingdom: Routledge. pp. 51 ↩︎
- Howes 71 ↩︎
- Tillotson, G. H. R (Giles Henry Rupert). 2000. The Artificial Empire: The Indian Landscapes of William Hodges.
Richmond, Surrey, UK: Curzon. pp. 100 ↩︎ - Tillotson 27 ↩︎
- Nochlin, Linda. 1989. “The Imaginary Orient.” In The Politics of Vision, 1st ed., 33–59. United Kingdom: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429495960-3. ↩︎
- Nochlin 50-51 ↩︎
Lily Kumar