Patna (Eastern India)
Opaque watercolour on European paper
This captivating Company Painting depicts a man carrying two baskets suspended on a pole, with red flags attached at either end. A brass lota peeks out from one of the baskets. The water carrier is on his way back from Benares carrying the holy water from the sacred river
Under the Mughals Patna had never been a great artistic centre and although its Muhammadan governors had employed Mughal artists, there is no evidence that any strongly marked local style had developed. Yet Patna, like Murshidabad, was undergoing a social revolution and various circumstances in the later eighteenth century were to make it a centre of Indian-British painting. As a result of its increasing prosperity, a number of artists of the Kayasth caste were attracted to Patna from Murshidabad. One of these was a certain Sewak Ram, who had migrated there by I790. He began to produce sets of occupations as well as large paintings of ceremonies and festivals. One such set, now in the India Office Library, was purchased by Lord Minto, while a painting from a similar set in the Indian Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum was acquired by Lord Amherst when he was Governor-General (August 1823 to March 1828). British taste in the early nineteenth century shows itself in both subjects and colour range – sepia wash enlivened with touches of brighter colour – adopted by the Patna artists.
Painting Size (cms): 23(H) x 18.5(W)
Painting Size (inches): 9(H) x 7.5(W)
