Lucknow from the Gomti, Lucknow, India, between 1821 and 1826, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

YALE - This exhibition tells the story of artists from India, Britain, and China who worked in the era of one of the most powerful corporations in history. The British East India Company began in 1600 as a private trading enterprise but grew into a military and political force during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It waged war to rule India and sell opium in China. To support its commercial and imperial goals, the Company encouraged its agents to commission art. Works of art depicted commodities, functioned as gifts to ease trade deals and build alliances, and visually recorded the places and societies where the Company traded and governed. 

The artists featured here trained in Indian courts, in art and military institutes in Britain, and in Chinese workshops. In their artistic exchanges, they combined regional methods with new materials and techniques. This exhibition, of more than one hundred objects, is mostly drawn from the YCBA’s rich collection of works from Asia, including rich opaque watercolors, large-scale oil portraits, evocative architectural drafts and a spectacular thirty-seven-foot-long scroll. It takes visitors on a journey through port cities and into the worlds of artists, showing how artists shaped, and were shaped by, the Company’s ruthless ventures while creating artworks of great beauty and innovation.

Accompanying Publication

Edited by curators Laurel O. Peterson and Holly Shaffer, Painters, Ports, and Profits features more than one hundred objects drawn primarily from the Yale Center for British Art’s collection, including architectural drafts, burnished opaque watercolors, hand-colored aquatints, small and large-scale portraits, and a spectacular thirty-seven-foot-long scroll depicting the city of Lucknow. An international group of scholars, curators, and conservators provide rich commentary based on new research.

Unknown artist (Company style), Breadnut (Artocarpus camansi), ca. 1825, Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on medium, slightly textured, cream laid paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund, B2022.5.

In this striking watercolor, both the botanical subject and the artists’ materials traveled on Company trade routes. Representations of local fruits appealed to Company agents, and the breadfruit—as this specimen was known in the 1820s—was a favorite. Here, the lush, dark green leaves, textured rind, and juicy flesh suggest bounty.

This easy-to-grow starchy fruit had intrigued Europeans since the seventeenth century as a potential bread substitute. In the 1790s, a venture aimed to transplant the fruit from Tahiti to Jamaica, to fuel the forced labor of the enslaved population. Similar efforts were made in India after a famine killed more than ten million people in Bengal, the seat of Company power. The plant was still of interest in the 1820s, when a Chinese artist working in the Malacca Strait painted this watercolor. This x-ray reveals the watermarks of the British papermaker Whatman & Balston and of the Company, indicating the paper was produced for export and use by the Company.

Bhawani Das, active 1778–82, A Great Indian Fruit Bat or Flying Fox (Pteropus giganteus), 1778 to 1782, Pen and ink, watercolor, gum arabic, and white gouache on watermarked paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund, B2021.13.2.

Using a brush made from just a few squirrel hairs, the artist meticulously rendered the soft furry body, expressive eyes, and delicate whiskers of a female bat. Bhawani Das was one of three artists painting watercolors of Indian plants and animals for Mary, Lady Impey, and her husband, Sir Elijah Impey, the chief justice of the Supreme Court in Bengal.

Bhawani Das had moved from Patna to Calcutta with other artists in his network to find patrons in this growing commercial center. To appeal to Company agents like the Impeys, he blended materials and techniques. Working on a large sheet of European paper, he was able to depict the bat’s five-foot wingspan closer to life size than he could have on smaller Indian sheets. He used an iron-based pigment to carefully draw the underlying structure of the wings. This image, made with scanning x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, shows the use of lead white to sharpen the edges, a traditional Indian technique.

Gangaram Chintaman Navgire Tambat, active 1790s, A Rhinoceros in the Peshwa's Menagerie at Poona, 1790, Pen and black ink, brown ink, gray wash, gouache, and graphite on medium, moderately textured, beige laid paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B2006.14.33.

Gangaram Chintaman Tambat was employed by Charles Warre Malet in the 1790s to make drawings in and around his native Pune (formerly Poona) and was described by his patron as “very ingenious.” Although we know very little about his life, he is one of the few Indian artists who can be rescued from the anonymity of the “Company School.” This remarkable drawing of a rhinoceros was made at the end of November 1790, and the annotations, which also capture the animal’s sheer size, record that it was made with “great fidelity” from a specimen in Maratha Peshwa’s menagerie at Pune. The notes also suggest Tambat made a wax model of the rhinoceros, which has sadly been lost.

Tilly Kettle, 1735–1786, Shuja al-Daula, Nawab of Awadh, 1772, Oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1976.7.48.

Shuja al-Daula, who governed the wealthy region of Awadh from Faizabad, gazes out of the picture frame, his hand resting on an archery bow. In Mughal India, hunting showcased a ruler’s authority. The painter, Tilly Kettle, focused on the Nawab’s features—his distinctive mustache and prominent jowl—and his cosmopolitan dress. The fur-lined coat he wears signals his connection both to his ancestors in Persia and to the Mughal court.

Kettle trained in England but moved to India in 1768—one of the first professional European painters to establish their careers there. He worked for Company officials and regional rulers, making at least five portraits of Shuja al-Daula.

unknown artist, Yellow-Eyed Babbler (Chrysomma sinense) Perched on Chinese Hat Plant (Holmskioldia sanguinea), ca. 1770, Watercolor, gouache, and pen and black ink on moderately thick, slightly textured, cream laid paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1975.4.1968.

The Company’s early fortunes rested on Indian textiles like this one, which were popular because of their vibrant, colorfast designs. These compositions influenced drawings and paintings of plants and birds, such as the watercolor shown here. Whether using paper or textiles, artists fused regional styles and newly available materials to appeal to Company agents who were keen to gather knowledge about the natural world.

In the watercolor, the artist focuses on the beauty of the branch, and on its botany: the leaves and blossoms show stages of the plant’s life cycle. The composition combines the strong tradition of painting nature in India with the influence of Chinese bird and flower paintings and European botanical illustrations. Technical analysis reveals that the artist used pigments from all three regions: Indian yellow and indigo from India, vermilion from China, and Prussian blue from Europe.

For these works, and throughout this exhibition, when the name of the artist has not been identified, we describe them as being by an “artist now unknown.” We use this phrase to signal that the artist’s identity was known at one time and may be discovered through future research.

Tilly Kettle, 1735–1786, A Woman Holding a Hookah at Faizabad, India, 1772, Oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, B1981.25.385.

This is one of Tilly Kettle’s most intriguing paintings from the court of the Nawab Shuja al- Daula, as the subject’s identity remains unknown. She poses like a dancer, but also holds the mouthpiece of a hookah, which elite women often smoked while seated. Is she a member of the Nawab’s household, an entertainer, or a bibi, an Indian consort of a European man? Kettle himself had a relationship with an Indian woman who bore their two children. She could also be an idealized figure, whose image would have enticed audiences in London, where this painting was sold after Kettle went bankrupt.

Unknown artist (Company style), A Marriage Procession by Night, Patna, between 1810 and 1840, Watercolor and gouache on thick, slightly textured, cream wove paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund, B2017.18.2.

This scene shows a baraat, the part of a wedding when the groom’s family processes to the bride’s family home. Lit by silvery torches, the groom’s face is hidden behind a veil of beads or flowers. Excited onlookers gather on balconies to watch the celebration.

Artists working for the Company increasingly used new materials and techniques to create innovative, repeatable compositions. This hybrid style came to be known as “Company painting.” This painting was likely based on a composition by Sewak Ram (ca. 1770–1830), who worked in the Mughal center of Murshidabad before moving to Patna, a major site of opium production. Patna artists worked efficiently, using drawing tools and transparent sheets of mica (a mineral) to copy compositions. Here, the striking diagonal of the cityscape suggests the use of a camera obscura, a device that helps artists draw correct perspective.

Circle of Lam Qua, 1801–1860, Portrait of an Unknown Woman, ca. 1850, Oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund, B2021.16.

Unlike the portraits of the medical patients nearby, we know almost nothing about the identity of this woman. Is she a real person or an idealized “beauty”? Her inviting gesture and gaze suggest that she might represent one of the many women who worked on Canton’s “flower boats,” where sex workers and entertainers attracted locals and traders alike. The woman has styled herself carefully, from the distinctive parting of her hair to the chrysanthemum-and-butterfly embroidery along the edge of her gown. These fashions indicate that the portrait was made in the second half of the nineteenth century, and thus most likely by a workshop following in the tradition of Lam Qua.