Arjun Motwani

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA will result in an essay titled Indian Commodities and Commodified Indians in Late Eighteenth Century Portraiture based on the paintings at the Victoria Memorial Hall (VMH) Kolkata and literature about the period. As the title suggests, the essay will focus on the exotic material objects and labour that is presented in the paintings, and also engage with larger issues such as Orientalism, colonial expansion, the material culture and transcontinental trade in eighteenth century India. This is a collaboration with the Victoria Memorial Hall (VMH) in Kolkata. The Victoria Memorial Hall, recognised as a national monument was dedicated to Queen Victoria and opened its doors to the public in 1921. The museum houses a large collection of artefacts and a rich visual and textual archive that encapsulates the history of the Indian subcontinent extending over three and a half centuries, beginning from 1650. Arjun Motwani is the Principal Investigator for this project. 

 

Arjun Motwani is currently completing his MPhil in English Literature at Jadavpur University. His research interests include Colonial Calcutta, Orientalism, Indology, Art History, the Colonial Art of Bengal, Literature and the City, Renaissance Studies and Aesthetic Theory. As one of the aims of the project is to use the tools developed by postcolonial textual criticism, to explore the body of Orientalist paintings under review, Arjun, with his wide-ranging interest in both literary and visual studies, is best placed to be the Principal Investigator of this Foundation project of IFA.

 

The essay Indian Commodities and Commodified Indians in Late Eighteenth Century Portraiture will throw light on the remarkable art of portraiture that flourished in late eighteenth century Calcutta. This was a time when officials of the British East India Company who lived in India, wanted to convey to their people back home, something of the grandeur and exoticism of their life in the fabled ‘Orient.’ In fact, the years between 1704 and 1717 is often regarded as a watershed in the history of European engagement with ‘the Orient’ - when the earliest translations of the Arabian Nights appeared, and the notion of the ‘Orient’ as a world of magic, dazzling jewels and unbridled hedonism gained popularity. It was partly in response to this interest in the Orient that Europeans (mainly Britons), who succeeded in making a fortune in India, began commissioning ‘portrait-trophies’ of themselves to advertise the opulence of their lives in the colonies.

 

The immense popularity of this genre of art attracted a large number of European portraitists to sail to India to grasp the lucrative possibilities awaiting them. The portraits they painted depicted the domestic space of the European administrators in India in painstakingly realistic detail. It presented them amidst sundry rare, exotic commodities and objects acquired by them such as hookahs, chintz, Persian rugs, Mughal miniatures and silks, together with anonymous ‘native’ figures who were present in the background. Maya Jasanoff’s Collectors of Empire: Objects, Conquests and Imperial Self-Fashioning, 2004 and Natasha Eaton’s Nostagia for the Exotic: Creating an Imperial Art in London, 1750-1793, 2006 discuss in some detail the ways in which the objects became important markers of the socio-economic status of the owners. The painters thus tried their hands at various kind of portraits, each variety aiming to satisfy a particular need or curiosity of the (mostly European) consumers. The Victoria Memorial Hall houses a large oeuvre of these paintings.

 

The paintings for research for the essay will include portraits of dignitaries by Tilly Kettle, Ozias Humphry, Thomas Hickey and others, as also the ‘conversation pieces’ of Johann Zoffany. In addition to the paintings, the research will also encompass the study of secondary literature on the period that engages with the connections between colonialism and the desire to collect territories, fetishised goods, and manpower from the vast domains. While much has been written about the stories that the Europeans wished to narrate, little study has gone into the ‘inert part of the background’ of the paintings that comprised the panoply of Indian commodities and Indian characters who were denied the right to speak or narrate. The essay Indian Commodities and Commodified Indians in Late Eighteenth Century Portraiture will address this, together with larger questions on the ways in which the ‘Oriental’ commodities and domestic servants in the portraits act as signifiers of the sitters’ wealth and authority; the extent to which European portraitists succeed in simultaneously including them within the painting and diverting attention away from them to the colonial masters; and the possibility to reconstruct the story of those subaltern figures who made this transcontinental trade possible but who are, ultimately, hiding in plain sight in these paintings. 

 

The outcome of the project will be the essay, an online exhibition or website, an interactive social media platform and talks at the VMH. The deliverables to IFA with the final report are the essay, the online exhibition or website and recordings of the talks. 

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.