This rediscovered watercolour is a remarkable record of some of the Hindu characters that populated Calcutta at the turn of the 18th into the 19th Century. Calcutta (or Kolkata as it is now) in West Bengal first came to prominence in the late 17th Century as an East India Company trading post. Its position on the banks of the Hooghly River and easy access to rich and fertile Bengal made it a prized European asset in the Indian Subcontinent. After fighting off French threats and then consolidating its grip over the financial control of the territory in the mid-18th Century, the East India Company eventually stripped the ruling Nawabs of their power and assumed direct control over the city in 1793. Calcutta would then become the centre of British rule in India, and the de facto capital of the India until 1911 when the honour was transferred to the Mughal city of Delhi to coincide with George V being crowned Emperor of India.

The watercolour depicts a European interior in Calcutta, decorated with wood panelling in a restrained classical style, much in fashion in Britain at the end of the 18th Century. At this moment of increasing prosperity and confidence in the Company’s rule in India, Calcutta was being built in a European classical style, with the city’s principal Anglican church, St John’s, being completed in 1787.

Despite the architectural setting, this watercolour is entirely peopled with Indians, specifically Hindu men of different castes and roles in society. These different Hindu ‘types’ were described and illustrated in etchings made by the Flemish artist Frans Balthazar Solvyns (1760 – 1824). Solvyns, who was initially a maritime painter, travelled to Calcutta in 1790 and in 1796 published firstly, a volume of prints entitled A Collection on Two Hundred and Fifty Coloured Etchings: Descriptive of the Manners, Customs and Dresses of the Hindoos, and secondly, on his on his return to Europe, four volumes of etchings called Les Hindoûs. This artistic and ethnographic project illustrates the myriad castes, occupations, costumes and customs of the Hindus he encountered in Calcutta. Although commercially unsuccessful, Solvyns’ works exerted a large influence on the burgeoning ‘Company School’ of Indian painters working in the early part of the 19th Century.

This watercolour is the work of an Indian artist and was executed in Calcutta in around 1800. This artist was evidently working in close proximity to Solvyns and must have had access to his preliminary drawings. The principal figures in this watercolour are derived from Solvyns’ illustrations and, whilst some of them do appear in the watercolour as they do in the etchings, others have not been reversed and therefore resemble Solvyns’ original drawings made for the later prints. Despite Solvyns being the source of the figures, this watercolour is not merely a copy after the Flemish artist, but an original and inventive creation, unique to the artist responsible. The interior setting and the arrangement of the figures is his own entirely. There are two other watercolours – surely by the same hand as ours – in the holdings of the Oriental and India Office Collections at the British Library.[1] These watercolours compare very closely with ours; they have the same dimensions and also show different Hindu characters artfully arranged in both riverside and interior Calcutta settings. Like ours, the figures in these two watercolours are not slavishly copied from Solvyns’ prints. Rather, their facial expressions are livelier and more certainly drawn. Jerry Losty, who was the curator of prints and drawings at the India Office Library, pointed out that their watercolours (and by extension, ours) were made by an artist who had

‘direct access to Solvyns’ original drawings […] The sharpness of detail […] especially in the faces, contrasts with the poorly executed line and faces in the etchings, and suggests that the unknown artist has been truer to Solvyns’ original intentions through working closely with the original drawings. It is impossible not to admire the skill with which he has places the figures.’[2]

The central seated figure in our watercolour is the most prominent both compositionally and societally. He is a Kṣatriya (or Kshatriya), the second (after Brahmins) of the four varnas, or Hindu social classes. Men of his class were rulers, warriors, governors and landowners. Solvyns describes them as a ‘warrior cast […] remarked for courage. In his ears, according to the general practice of Hindoos of his cast, he wears large rings with a big pearl or precious stone in the middle’.[3] As a member of the highest temporal varna (Brahmins being of a priestly class), the Kṣatriya is the only seated figure, and sits at the front and centre of the composition. This figure is a reversal of Solvyns’ 1799 print and therefore must relate to his original drawing.

Behind him is assembled a cast of Hindu types, all subservient to the Kṣatriya to whom they attend. To the left is a Hukābardār, or hookah bearer. He is a ‘pipe carrier, and is charged with all that concerns it […] He accompanies his master wherever he goes, for the desire of smoking never quits him’.[4]

To the immediate right of the Kṣatriya stands the ominous figure of a Korabardar or Corah-Burdar (lash bearer). He is presumably the Kṣatriya’s enforcer and was ‘hired to flog the servants’, but after a British crackdown on the hiring of such individuals, ‘It is only with the great men in India, and Europeans at a great distance from the courts of justice, that the Corah-Burdar is still among the servants of the household’.[5]

The next figure is the Sotābardār, a staff-carrier. He was in the employ of officials and carried a silver stick, ‘his office [is] to cry out the name of his employer in the streets, and to proclaim that of his visitors in the house’.[6] This figure was presumably taken from Solyvns’ original drawing, although the striped carpet in the 1799 etching appears to have made it into the watercolour.

Continuing to the right, we have a Sadgop, a member of a landowning agricultural caste whose prosperity and status rose during the 18th Century. They were often employed in managerial roles, such as warehouse keepers, or as accountants. His profession is signified by the quill behind his ear.

Finally, to the far right of the composition there is a domestic servant called an Ābdār. His ‘sole business [was] to cool the liquors […] the heat of the climate renders it absolutely necessary, and every person of any fortune keeps a servant purposely to cool the water and the wine’.[7]

We therefore see how this artist has, by using disparate sources, compiled a composite and original artwork. The figures are thoughtfully placed, some in front of the other, to give the watercolour the feel of a European conversation-piece. Although the artist has clearly intended to show a seated Kṣatriya with a convincing retinue of retainers, it is quite probable that, with so many Hindu ‘types’ from which to choose, these figures were also selected for their poses and their suitability in forming a pleasing composition.

The Calcutta of circa 1800 was evidently a place of artistic and cultural exchange. Here an Indian artist has freely adapted the prototypes of a European draughtsman. The watercolourist takes this one step further in his rendering of the interior setting. As mentioned previously, the setting is, by and large, a classicised European one, yet closer inspection reveals a mix of Indian and European decoration. In the upper left corner, there are two household Hindu shrines mounted to the European wainscot, whilst in the adjoining room at the rear of the composition, a European, possibly British, portrait is just visible at the extreme upper right of the sheet. This watercolour is therefore evidence of the cross-pollination of artistic practice and influence, but also of a time of relative cultural tolerance in Company-governed India, before hardening attitudes culminated in direct rule from Britain in 1858.

This extremely rare watercolour is a significant rediscovery. Along with the two Oriental and India Office watercolours, it one of only three surviving works known to have been executed by this, as yet unknown, Indian artist.

[1] A drawing composed of different Indian types based on the work of François Baltazard Solvyns. | The National Archives

A drawing composed of different Indian types based on the work of François Baltazard Solvyns. | The National Archives

[2] R. Hardgrave, A Portrait of the Hindus, Oxford, 2004, p. 105.

[3] F. B. Solvyns, Les Hindoûs, Paris, 1808-12, vol. I, no. 4., in Hardgrave, A Portrait of the Hindus, p. 168.

[4] Solvyns, Les Hindoûs, vol. IV, no. 4., in Hardgrave, A Portrait of the Hindus, p. 284.

[5] Solvyns, Les Hindoûs, vol. IV, no. 2., in Hardgrave, A Portrait of the Hindus, p. 305.

[6] Solvyns, Les Hindoûs, vol. IV, no. 5., in Hardgrave, A Portrait of the Hindus, p. 279.

[7] Solvyns, Les Hindoûs, vol. IV, no. 5., in Hardgrave, A Portrait of the Hindus, p. 303.