Indian Company School Ghasiara Grass-cutters

An original c.1830 watercolour painting, Indian Company School, Ghasiara Grass-cutters.

An interesting Indian Company painting showing men working as grass-cutters or Ghasiara. The grass would be cut by hand and bundled up, then taken to market to be sold or be given to a master to feed his horses.

Company paintings by local Indian artists, commissioned and collected by European travellers, merchants and workers of the East India Company, would typically show everyday activities such as this, which were perceived to be exotic, in being so different from life back home.

'Company School' refers to a variety of hybrid styles that came about through the influence of Western (especially British) patrons on Indian artists in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Finding traditional, stylised Indian painting not to their taste, these patrons began to collect works that, while incorporating traditional elements from Rajput and Mughal painting 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.

On wove paper.