Indian Company School A Man Hand Block Printing Calico Textiles

An original 19th-century watercolour painting – Indian Company School, A Man Hand Block Printing Calico Textiles.

A fine Indian Company painting showing a man block printing textiles by hand.

Indian textiles are known for their beauty, with traditions of craftsmanship dating back to ancient times. The history of Indian textiles also crucially reflects the legacy of colonialism; the dominant British East India Company began requesting that craftsmen swap out traditional red-dyed grounds for white to better suit European tastes, and Indian cloth makers also started producing chintzes with motifs inspired by English trends.

This painting is a fine example of an Indian Company painting, produced for Western (especially British) patrons in India in the 19th century, many of whom were working for the East India Company. It displays the striking hybrid techniques which led to the categorisation of the ‘Company’ style as a School. While incorporating traditional elements from Rajput and Mughal painting, they were given a more 'western' appearance through their use of perspective and rounded modelling, as opposed to the more decorative, 'flatter' styles that had gone before. Company paintings would typically show scenes and activities such as this, which were perceived to be exotic, in being so different from life back home.

On cream wove paper.