Art and the East India Company
The public perception of the East India Company, an organisation which was to become one of Britain's most notorious colonial ventures, was mediated by a collective of artists. Diplomatic wrangling, imperial posturing, trade and warfare became the subjects of a significant artistic movement, aimed at depicting and dissecting the Company’s involvement in the political and social life of the period.
Explore the art of the East India Company through a selection of prints and books, carefully chosen from our current stock, which offer valuable insights into artistic and colonial attitudes and activities of the period.
1. Birds & Beasts
Royal tigers, parading elephants, hunted wolves – birds and beasts frequently found themselves at the very heart of the visual art of the period. Animals and animal hunts were represented as wild, dynamic and viscerally exciting, whilst at times also serving an important symbolic purpose.
In Zoffany’s Tiger Hunting in the East Indies, a tiger is held at bay by a party of hunters, including, John Carnac, an army officer in the East India Company. According to Joseph Sramek, in colonial India, British officials often killed tigers, or represented them being killed, to emulate local monarchs and as a show of masculinity and dominance. Not only was tiger hunting an activity favoured by Indian rulers, but depictions of tigers were often used by as symbols of kingship, most famously by Tipu Sultan.
In Embassy of Hyderbeck to Calcutta, animals are at the heart of the conflict between colonial and local rule. In this striking engraving the Embassy is pushed to the background in favour of the rampaging elephant. This is no peaceful and orderly diplomatic mission, but a dramatic and primal scene where lack of control is emphasised and chaos reigns.
In this energetic work, Chase after a Wolf, by Samuel Howitt and Thomas Williamson, a wolf is portrayed being hunted down by a group of men and their dogs. For Howitt and Williamson, prints such as these profited from a surge in fascination with customs in colonial India. Images by the pair tend to evoke an air of adventure and excitement, catering to the British public’s curiosity about newly acquired colonies.
2. Across Land & Sea
Artists associated with the East India Company frequently depicted naval scenes, since the dominance and exploration of land and sea was an essential part of the Company’s military and commercial activities around the world. According to Geoff Quilley, not only did such works serve a documentative purpose, recording newly acquired colonies, but many also provided distinct commentaries on the activities of the Company and the territories it invaded.
Thomas Daniell and his nephew travelled in India as artists between 1876 and 1793, after having been given permission to do so by the East India Company. According to Quilley, the resulting works served to introduce the newly annexed territories to a British audience and presented a largely positive view of the Company’s commercial activities. This hand-coloured aquatint engraving of Fakeers Rock, a sacred site on the river Ganges, highly valued by Hindus, is a distinctive example of their work.
A striking example of a landscape work, depicting the Kailasa Temple, the largest monolithic temple to be found in the Ellora Caves. A group of 34 caves with temples dedicated to Buddhism, Brahmanism and Jainism, the site itself remains an extraordinary feat of ancient Indian religious tolerance and architectural achievement.
In these two drawings by John Hood, a pair of ships, the Durrington and the Triton, are depicted in high seas. Despite the weather and suffering two broken masts, the Triton survived the storm in 1752, continuing to trade into the early 1760s. Both East Indiamen, such sizeable merchant crafts were amongst the ships employed by the British East India Company across a wide expanse of colonies and territories. The trading activities of the Company’s vessels included tea, silk, porcelain, spices and cotton, as well as, at times, slave labour.
3. Figures & Faces
The figures and faces of Britain and its colonies were an essential part of the art that was issued as a result of the activities of the East India Company. The way in which the peoples and societies of colonial India were represented in such pieces, and often indeed misrepresented, makes the following works intriguing records of contemporary attitudes and ambitions during era of the East India Company.
With their distinctive red uniforms, the Moore’s soldiers stand out in the vastness of the landscapes. In Moore's Eighteen views taken at & near Rangoon, soldiers are depicted as regimented, splendid and powerful, a unified expression of military control.
Dynamic and vivid, it is impossible to disregard the importance of Zoffany’s work as a depiction of colonial India and the figures and faces at its heart. At once ‘satire, criticism and celebration’ (Tate), the scene represents a spectacular and complex meeting of colonial and local figures. Indeed, though European figures are to the foreground in Colonel Mordaunt’s Cock Match, the image was drawn from a cross-cultural context that was by no means typical for historical pictures of the period.
About Us
Shapero Rare Books is an internationally renowned dealer in London, specialising in antiquarian & rare books and works on paper, with particular expertise in fine illustrated books from the 15th to the 20th century, travel & voyages, natural history, modern firsts, rare children’s books, guidebooks, Hebraica & Judaica, Eastern European, and Islamica.
Shop online and enjoy free international shipping now.
FEATURED ITEMS
Browse All-
Eighteen views taken at & near Rangoon [with]
MOORE, Lieut. Joseph.Original price £17,500.00 - Original price £17,500.00Original price £0.00£17,500.00£17,500.00 - £17,500.00Current price £17,500.00From the library of a protagonist in the war. Moore's views of Rangoon constitute the finest depiction of events during the first Burmese War. This...
View full detailsOriginal price £17,500.00 - Original price £17,500.00Original price £0.00£17,500.00£17,500.00 - £17,500.00Current price £17,500.00 -
Inscriptions on the Seikh Guns Captured by the Army of the Sutledge 1845-46.
[FIRST SIKH WAR].Original price £20,000.00 - Original price £20,000.00Original price £0.00£20,000.00£20,000.00 - £20,000.00Current price £20,000.00First Sikh War. Scarce. The title-page gives the name of C. Gomeze as the designer and lithographer - probably the Christopher Gomez, of the H.C. L...
View full detailsOriginal price £20,000.00 - Original price £20,000.00Original price £0.00£20,000.00£20,000.00 - £20,000.00Current price £20,000.00 -
Personal observations on Sindh;
POSTANS, Thomas.Original price £1,650.00 - Original price £1,650.00Original price £0.00£1,650.00£1,650.00 - £1,650.00Current price £1,650.00Mrs Postans' advance copy. Postans (1808-46) was assistant to the political agent in Sindh and Baluchistan. A comprehensive description of Sindh in...
View full detailsOriginal price £1,650.00 - Original price £1,650.00Original price £0.00£1,650.00£1,650.00 - £1,650.00Current price £1,650.00 -
An account of the kingdom of Caubul,
ELPHINSTONE, Mountstuart.Original price £1,800.00 - Original price £1,800.00Original price £0.00£1,800.00£1,800.00 - £1,800.00Current price £1,800.00the first detailed account of Afghanistan by a western observer. Elphinstone collected important information on the geography, government, languag...
View full detailsOriginal price £1,800.00 - Original price £1,800.00Original price £0.00£1,800.00£1,800.00 - £1,800.00Current price £1,800.00 -
Allerneuester Geographisch- und Topographischer
HEYDT [aka HEIJDT], Johann Wolfgang.Original price £7,500.00 - Original price £7,500.00Original price £0.00£7,500.00£7,500.00 - £7,500.00Current price £7,500.00Important early iconography of Jakarta. Heydt's Ost-Indien provides us with an extensive and important work with regard to the town planning and ge...
View full detailsOriginal price £7,500.00 - Original price £7,500.00Original price £0.00£7,500.00£7,500.00 - £7,500.00Current price £7,500.00 -
The Voyage of Sir Henry Middleton to Bantam and the Maluco islands;
CORNEY, Bolton, editor.Original price £350.00 - Original price £350.00Original price £350.00£350.00£350.00 - £350.00Current price £350.00Hakluyt Society First Series, no. 19.Important early East India Company voyage to theEast Indies.The appendix includes commissions, letters of Ja...
View full detailsOriginal price £350.00 - Original price £350.00Original price £350.00£350.00£350.00 - £350.00Current price £350.00 -
The diary of William Hedges, Esq. (afterwards Sir William Hedges),
HEDGES, William.Original price £600.00 - Original price £600.00Original price £600.00£600.00£600.00 - £600.00Current price £600.00'An important glimpse of the activities of the East IndiaCompany in the period 1682 to 1684' (Riddick). Hedges was a director of the Company and p...
View full detailsOriginal price £600.00 - Original price £600.00Original price £600.00£600.00£600.00 - £600.00Current price £600.00 -
Report of proceedings on a voyage to the northern ports of China
Lindsay, Hugh Hamilton.Original price £650.00 - Original price £650.00Original price £0.00£650.00£650.00 - £650.00Current price £650.00Author's wife's copy. Hugh Lindsay's Report of Proceedings contains reports by Lindsay, an East India Company man, and Charles Gutzlaff on trade wi...
View full detailsOriginal price £650.00 - Original price £650.00Original price £0.00£650.00£650.00 - £650.00Current price £650.00 -
An authentick and faithful history of that arch-pyrate Tulagee Angria.
(TOOLAJI ANGRIA).Original price £4,750.00 - Original price £4,750.00Original price £0.00£4,750.00£4,750.00 - £4,750.00Current price £4,750.00Rare. ESTC lists only BL, Advocates Library, and Birmingham Central Library in U.K., adding College of William and Mary and University of Minnesot...
View full detailsOriginal price £4,750.00 - Original price £4,750.00Original price £0.00£4,750.00£4,750.00 - £4,750.00Current price £4,750.00
Leave a comment