Special Topics in the Arts of Asia (389-0-1)

Topic

Painting Nature in British India

Instructors

Yuthika Sharma

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-410: Mon, Wed 12:30PM - 1:50PM

Overview of class

As the East India Company consolidated its authority in India in the eighteenth century, European officials, naturalists and artists sought to map the subcontinent's landscapes and record the region's flora and fauna. They often worked with Indian artists and draftsmen to devise conventions through which the natural world was observed, classified and represented. Through a look at landscape drawings, gardens and estates, and studies of plants, birds, and animals, this seminar takes the depiction of the natural world as a site of encounter among artistic traditions and differing modes of vision, where scientific inquiry and colonial power converged. Drawing on primary sources and recent scholarship, the seminar will investigate the trajectory of natural history painting from sixteenth and seventeenth-century Mughal court painting to Company sponsored works, and the continuation of this genre within studio and academic art practices in the nineteenth century.

Class Attributes

Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
SoC Additional Distro