Cheep thrills
Delhi’s DAG gallery spreads its wings with a stunning exhibition of bird paintings, created by Indian artists in the European Company style, between 1800 and 1835
It’s not birding season yet (unless you are smart and persistent enough to tap into the passage birding scene — knowing where to look and when as August turns to September). But at the DAG gallery in Delhi, 125 species from across the subcontinent have descended for the next few weeks. There’s a black-hooded oriole and a bluethroated barbet. A scaly-breasted munia has perched atop a flowering tree. Hoopoes, their crowns fanned and upright, look ready to take flight.
The best part: You don’t even need binoculars to spot them. They feature in Birds of India, the first exhibition dedicated to avian species hand-painted by Indian artists in the early decades of the 19th century.
The works are part of DAG’S collection, and come from four albums compiled between 1800 and 1835. Many feature exaggeratedly vivid colours. Some of the works have never been on display before.
Those familiar with Indian art might recognise these as Company paintings, works created when officials from the British East India Company started to document the subcontinent’s distinctive animals, plants, monuments and local communities. In an age before cameras, they’d typically hire Indian artists to do the job, creating a hybrid new style different from traditional miniature works. Company paintings featured real-life subjects rather than scenes from mythology or legend. So they incorporated European influences like linear perspective and naturalistic shading and were done in delicate watercolour, not opaque gouache.
“The research that has been done on the style is mostly scattered; it is still a developing field.” says Giles Tillotson, the show’s curator and the gallery’s senior vice-president of exhibitions and publications. London’s Victoria & Albert Museum has more than 2,000 Company works in its collection.
In 2018, Mumbai’s CSMVS hosted a show titled Indian Life and People in the 19th Century, with 120-odd Company paintings and sculptures from its own collections.
The subject took flight in 2019, with the first UK exhibition of Company paintings at the Wallace Collection museum in London. The show, Forgotten Masters, was curated by writer and historian William Dalrymple, and was an important step in recognising the works as masterpieces of Indian painting. “William’s show looked at superlative examples,” Tillotson says. “But this was popular art too. It started with individual patrons, but quickly, a market for it developed. The work became less refined but more popular.”
The DAG birds, nonetheless, are exceptionally beautiful. Ninety-nine of them are sourced from a single album, and typically for the time, include no record of the names of the artists who painted them. Most of the birds appear to have been worked on by a single painter or a small group of artists following a set style, making it trickier to identify any single name.
But for art lovers and bird-watchers alike, there’s plenty to see at the show. The cinereous vulture is depicted with a snake by his claws. Even the yellow-footed green pigeon, commonly spotted across
India, looks resplendent (and uncharacteristically cocky) in watercolour.
For Tillotson, who grew up in Cyprus and Hong Kong and has been avidly birdwatching in the 40 years he’s lived in India, the exhibition brings together disparate but stalled. The hero (Rajesh Khanna) mockingly refers to it as a “khatara”, but Tanuja, with her smart orange pantsuit and white driving gloves (not to mention the car), is obviously a rich young miss.
A less well-known but even more telling example is the song, Meri Lottery Lagne Wali Hai from Holi Aaye Re (1970), featuring comedian Rajendranath. If he wins the lottery (which is in the range of Rs 4 to 5 lakh), he sings gaily, he will buy an Impala. This is how the lyrics go: “Caron mein car chuni hai, car chuni Impala, Impala mein tujhe bithakar ghoomega dilwala”. This General Motors car, introduced in 1958, became a hit with Bollywood stars offscreen too. Meena Kumari was reportedly one of the first to buy one; Rajesh Khanna too zipped around Bombay in his Chevrolet Impala.
Vat 69: This legendary dark green bottle of Scotch whisky, with its narrow neck and red seal, has perhaps had more appearances not-quite-opposing interests.
The DAG has been acquiring a broad range of Company paintings in an effort to expand its interests beyond 20th-century art. For collectors, they’re an emerging category from which to acquire new works. There are already plans to host more exhibitions featuring older paintings, perhaps one on Mughal architecture in the coming months. Tillotson hopes it will attract “a new catchment of people who would otherwise not be interested in art”. in Hindi films than any other alcoholic beverage. Since drinking was still considered an undesirable, vaguely sinful activity, Vat 69 was most often shown as the beloved tipple of a range of villains, from Ajit to Pran to Ranjit. Sometimes it popped up in surprising settings. In the 1969 film Mahal, the heroine Asha Parekh is celebrating her birthday and there is a proper bar counter where Vat 69 is given pride of place. In the 1973 film Yaadon ki Baarat, as Zeenat Aman sings Chura Liya Hai Tumne at a party in her house, the familiar wide-bodied bottle is prominently displayed at the bar. This blended whisky cast its spell way into the ’70s. In Don (1978), it’s Amitabh Bachchan’s drink of choice, as it is in Deewar (1975).
555 cigarettes: This was before smoking became a frightful sin. The cigarette to flaunt was 555 State Express. They were imported from the UK. Rajesh Khanna smoked them. So did Rajendra Kumar, and the writer Saadat Hasan Manto. Satyajit Ray is supposed to have carried a tin of 555 with him. In Scene 75, Hindi novelist and screenwriter Rahi Masoom Raza’s darkly satirical 1977 novel about the Hindi film industry, there is a hilarious interaction around a tin of 555. Upcoming screenwriter Ramnath takes out a tin while he’s on a house-hunting expedition. The broker, Manchandani, who has just graduated from beedis to Charminars, is mightily impressed. It is the first time in his life that he has been in such close proximity to a tin of 555. When Ramnath offers him one, he immediately becomes focused on finishing it as soon as possible so that he can smoke another. But Ramnath catches on and swiftly puts the tin back in his pocket, much to Manchandani’s chagrin.
It’s hard to say why that particular car, whisky or cigarette became more coveted than other imported brands. That particular alchemy is something no one can fathom even today.
more of India’s birds, as painted by Company artists
London-based musician and composer Soumik Datta has collaborated with Beyonce, Jay-z, Anoushka Shankar. In November, ahead of the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, he’ll present his animated film, Songs of the Earth, as part of a British Council commission. The sarod maestro worked on the film remotely, collaborating with animators in India. He credits the creative challenge with keeping him in good mental health through the pandemic. Excerpts from an interview.
IN A TIME BEFORE
PHOTOGRAPHY, ART WAS USED TO DOCUMENT LOCAL CULTURES, FLORA, FAUNA. COMPANY PAINTINGS WERE
SUCH WORKS COMMISSIONED BY OFFICIALS OF THE BRITISH EAST INDIA COMPANY
What was on your mind as you shaped Songs of the Earth?
I’m no climate warrior. Most of us are still stuck figuring out the basics — recycling, sustainable shopping and forming ethical food habits. What is undeniable though, are the global voices urging us to adapt, wake up and not delay. There is a clear code red when it comes to our future. That’s what I want to be part of. I’m collaborating with animators Sachin Bhatt and Anjali Kamat in India. The score engages singers and instrumentalists from the UK. Earth Day Network has brought in specialist researchers to enrich the story about deforestation, ocean pollution and the climate refugee crisis.
At the heart of the film is what I believe to be the greatest story of our time, that of a planet and its people. Beyond the smoke and fires, past the eroding shorelines and toxic rivers, I see an opportunity for us to let go of illusions of nationalism, break down borders, reshape the culture of economic profit and form a collective consciousness.
Collaborations with celebrities or cultural idols have an added glow of course. I’m especially enjoying working with Sachin Bhatt and Anjali Kamat.
But for me, the act of collaborating is almost spiritual. When it works, it allows those involved to create a new language unique to that team, to share inspiring and vulnerable sides with each other, to unburden tired shoulders from years of cultural conditioning.
Silent Spaces is a six-part Youtube series of new songs and performances filmed in empty concert halls, at museums and at nightclubs across the UK during the winter lockdown.
With 40 musicians, dancers and filmmakers, we opened the doors to vacant spaces like the British Museum and the Royal Albert Hall, breaking their silence with new songs of hope.
The experience was nothing short of lifeaffirming. Like many of us during that time, I had begun to experience a sense of loneliness and anxiety. The lockdown made me address my own mental health issues. In many ways, creativity saved me from darkness, pulling me back to making things — images, sounds and words — with others.
What do you want your music to be or do out in the world?
My music and art projects have always reflected the questions that have troubled me, be it issues of representation, injustice or the climate crisis. I’ve found the space of discomfort and confusion to be a deep source for creative dialogue.
Our world is increasingly polarised, the outcries of the marginalised now amplified on social media. So the intention behind every project is to untangle the impossible — to catalogue chaos through creativity. speaking to HT just after
her gold-medal win in Tokyo on Monday. The 19-year-old wheelchairbound shooter is the first Indian woman to win gold at the Paralympics. She has since won a bronze
medal too