Company Painting is a particular school of painting which formed during the British rule in India back in the 18th century. It originated as the British East India Company extended its expeditions across South Asia, for which many British employees settled in India. Landing in the foreign and exotic environment, they wished to capture every aspect of the land and its culture, and knew better than to get British painters. Hence, they hired local Indian artists to paint for them in order tomaintain the authentic cultural element in the paintings.“Aesthetically, they are the descendants of the picturesque scenes of India created by the likes of Thomas and William Daniell.”[1]The medium used for these company paintings was water color instead of gouache (a medium similar to water color except heavier and more opaque with the ratio of pigment to water was higher and particles were larger). The paintings reflected the particular region from which they arose. This meaning that the local traditions heavily influenced the styles of the company paintings.
This company painting depicts six soldiers with their uniforms specific to their posts.http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Painting_of_six_figures_depicting_military_uniforms.jpg
Amrita Sher-Gil was born, in Budapest, in 1913, to Sardar Umrao Singh Shergil (Punjabi) and Marie Antoinette (Hungarian). She grew up in Budapest while the First World War broke out. Due to the dismal events occurring at the time, the Sher-Gils were afraid to head back to India right away. Even after the war ended, their plans to return to India were yet again delayed due to Communist uprisings that occurred in 1919. Growing up, Amrita went back and forth, quite a bit, between Europe and India. Her early childhood paintings were influenced by the Hungarian folklore which her mother used to tell her and her sister, Indira. During her late teens and early twenties, she was sent to Paris, the European capital, for art training. She adapted well into Parisian lifestyle, although she eventually tired of the elite lifestyle. Her art at the time was mostly nude charcoal works. Eventually, she returned to India where her art style took a slight turn, as she began to focus on romanticizing Indian poverty.She then went on to proclaim that her real artistic mission was to “interpret the life of Indians and particularly the poor Indians, pictorially”[2]. However, she is known for the inconsistency in her work. She herself admitted, “My sense of form on the other hand is developing only now and still has a strong tendency to evade me. It very often happens that I grasp it only for a short period and only sections of my painting are good as a consequence.”[3]Some of her many works include Mother India, Three Girls, Self Portrait, and A Hungarian Peasant.
Mother India
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