Indian Company School Nobleman & Servant with Hookah

An original c.1830 watercolour painting, Indian Company School, Nobleman & Servant with Hookah.

A fine Indian Company painting showing an ornately dressed nobleman and his hookaburdar, carrying a hookah pipe. Hookah smoking was a favourite pastime in 18th and early-19th century India, and it was a luxurious habit which required employment of a special servant, the hookahburdar, whose duty it was to be ready with his master's hookah whenever called for, especially after meals.

Company paintings by local Indian artists, commissioned and collected by European travellers, merchants and workers of the East India Company, would typically show 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.