‘Vision & Landscape: Aquatints of India’ by Thomas and William Daniell

 

Yesterday I visited ‘Vision & Landscape: Aquatints of India’ by Thomas and William Daniell, the uncle-and-nephew duo who travelled across India between 1786 and 1793. Presented by DAG at the Ballroom of Bikaner House, the exhibition brings together 144 aquatints developed from the paintings, drawings and watercolours they made during their travels.

The makeshift gallery space has been spruced up adequately with lights and panels, and the display is elegant and erudite. My only problem was with the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling—part of the heritage paraphernalia of Bikaner House—which shed more light than necessary and made photography rather difficult because of the reflections on the glass. Now, is it a problem of the glass frames or a problem of the chandeliers? Either way, it is a minor distraction from an otherwise excellent show.

Calcutta was the capital of British India at the time, and itinerant artists generally arrived there first before undertaking journeys into the rest of the country, often with a retinue of servants, elephants and soldiers.

Travel was slow and arduous. Emile Eden, who came to India almost half a century after the Daniells, noted in letters to her sister in London that their maximum mileage in a day was around twenty miles—and that too if they started before sunrise. Depending on the terrain, the journey could involve boats, palanquins, elephants, horses and walking, with the day divided into schedules to avoid the intense noon heat.

The Daniells followed a similarly demanding route: from Calcutta through the northern plains, Bihar, Delhi, present-day Uttar Pradesh and Himachal, and then west and south through the Maratha, Mysore and Madras presidencies.

What emerged from these journeys is an extraordinary visual record of late-18th-century India.

The 144 aquatints in this exhibition were laboriously and meticulously developed from the paintings, drawings and watercolours the Daniells produced on their travels. Their subjects range from monuments, temples—often described by them as ‘pagodas’—and forts to administrative buildings, Mughal landmarks and medieval architectural remains.

The Daniells had an eye for detail. They did not merely record what was architecturally or aesthetically impressive. Their works contain information that is topographical, historical, military and demographic. Soldiers who accompanied them for protection appear in some works, as do the labourers who carried their equipment.

There are also wonderfully self-reflexive moments. At Ellora and Elephanta, for instance, one can see one of the Daniells making an on-the-spot drawing while the other depicts the scene from another vantage point. The act of looking, recording and representing becomes part of the image itself.

But the detail that stayed with me most is from Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu.

The magnificent rock-cut panel depicting Bhagiratha’s penance to bring the Ganges down from the heavens contains, almost inconspicuously in one corner, a cat imitating the penance of the sage.

And the Daniells noticed it.

That tiny cat is perhaps a perfect reminder of what makes these works so fascinating. They were looking at monuments, landscapes and histories, but they were also attentive to the little things that made those places alive.

If you are interested in history, architecture, art, travel and India’s topography in the late 18th century, this is a show worth spending time with.

‘Vision & Landscape: Aquatints of India’ — Thomas and William Daniell

DAG, Ballroom, Bikaner House

JohnyML