Page 255 - Eye of the beholder

The daniell'S Journey ThrouGh SouTh india in The SuMMer of 1792 - a reSearch arTicle
Those of us who were not born in the digital age remember the soulful nostalgia of looking at old pictures from holidays we went on long back. These days, the arrival of digital cameras has largely trivialized this experience. The rush of old memories that a poignant picture from the past generates is a rare feeling charged with emotion, irrespective of whether the journey in question was a real or a metaphorical one. For an art lover, the gravity of this feeling is much more intense when the journey in question is one of the most important from the Indian art historical point of view, and the image in question is by one of the most romanticized and important artists in Indian art. For, how many times does it happen in the world of art, or more specifically in Indian art that an important historical painting discovered hundreds of years after its execution can be attributed almost exactly to its date and place of execution, based on historical information available to art scholars? This chapter is devoted to the real life story of one such discovery. The trans-Indian journey undertaken by the Daniells in the late 1700s is certainly one of the most important epic journeys of its kind ever undertaken, and the painting featured here is one such newly discovered work whose whereabouts can be deciphered with remarkable accuracy based on available data.
The Daniells have been the most romanticized among the historically important Indian artists. Their aquatints have been continuously popular ever since their first publication in 1795. The uncle nephew duo of Thomas and William Daniell are held important by scholars in India as well as in England. Beyond that as well, their work has been researched and avidly collected by aficionados all over the world. For many students of Indian art, a subconscious belief exists that colonial Indian art as if begins with and is centered on the Daniells.
Curiously though, the Daniells were not the first British artists to set foot in India. On the contrary, their journey to India was motivated and inspired by the success of earlier artists that had come to India. Tilly Kettle, the earliest known British painter to set foot in India, had arrived in Madras in 1769. His oeuvre, executed primarily in Madras, Faizabad and Calcutta is highly regarded and well recorded. Geroge Wilson, another early British artist had worked under the nawab of Carnatic from 1774 to 1788 before returning to Britain. Stories of the success of these artists had made news in England, and had encouraged others to follow suit. By 1785, when the Daniells set sail for India, there were other artists of British provenance who were already active in India – Johann Zoffany, George Farington and Charles Smith being prominent among them. There was money to be made by pandering to the narcissistic urges of the rulers and the nobility, and these artists mostly catered to this market. As a result, most of these artists were primarily portrait painters, though landscapes executed by many of them testify to a high degree of skill.
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