The Indian Portrait Vii

The seventh exhibition in the series, focuses on the development of portraiture after the coming of the camera to India. It fuelled the enthusiasm of the Indian artists and photographic studios mushroomed across the country. Artists started using photographs to enhance portrait paintings, they developed a new aesthetic that integrated aspects of painting and photography in one image.

The ninth exhibition in the Indian Portrait series focuses on the introduction of Parsi portraiture in India and an insight on their art, culture and education etc. Paintings, photographs, CDVs, cabinet card albums, engravings, lithographs, prints & collectibles etc. are the different mediums that helped to preserve history. It contains over 170 portraits and was exhibited in December 2018.

The eleventh exhibition featuring photographs by Jyoti Bhatt, capturing his life and of his contemporaries through Portraits.

The tenth exhibition in the series will showcase classical paintings from all across India. The exhibition will cover 300 years and a vast geographic region from Jammu to Thanjavur, allowing viewers to compare how different patrons wished to be remembered and observe how historical events shaped India’s painting traditions.

This exhibition catalogue covers the art of portraiture which flourished in the royal courts of Rajasthan. Rajput rulers, warriors, heads of religious institutions and rich and influential merchants were the major patrons or art and had their portraits painted for visual documentation, political gifts and also as valuable art objects.

The role of the portrait in India between 1560 and 1860 served as an official chronicle or eye-witness account, as a means of revealing the intimate moments of everyday life, and as a tool for propaganda. Yet the proliferation and mastery of Indian portraiture in the Mughal and Rajput courts brought a new level of artistry and style to the genre.

The sixth exhibition and catalogue in the Indian Portrait series, from the collection of Anil Relia, focuses on the introduction of photography in India and its evolution up to Independence. The daguerreotype, ambrotype, carte de viste, cabinet cards, stereoviews, etc. are the different mediums that helped to preserve history. Photographs by famous names like Bourne & Shepherd, Lala Deen Dayal, Darogah Abbas Ali, Shamsuddin Lukmanji, S. Hormusjee, Shapur N. Bhedwar, Hurrychand Chintamon, etc. are shown in the exhibition.