Company style, also known asCompany painting[1] (Hindi:kampani kalam) is a term for a hybrid Indo-European style of paintings made inBritish India by Indian artists, many of whom worked for European patrons in theEast India Company or other foreign Companies in the 18th and 19th centuries. The style blended traditional elements fromRajput andMughal painting (predominately) with a more Western treatment of perspective, volume and recession. Most paintings were small, reflecting the Indianminiature tradition, but the natural history paintings of plants and birds were usually life size.
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First emerging inMurshidabad, later leading centres were the main British settlements or influence centres ofCalcutta,Madras,Banaras,Delhi,Lucknow,Patna,Trichinopoly orTanjore.[1] Subjects included portraits, landscapes and views, and scenes of Indian people, dancers and festivals. Series of figures of differentcastes or trades were particular favourites, with an emphasis on differences in costume; now they are equally popular as subjects for analysis by historians of the imperialist mentality.
Portfolios of animal or botanical subjects were also commissioned, and some erotic subjects. Architectural subjects were popular, usually done in a detailed and frontal style more like that of an architectural draftsman than the Romanticised style used by most European painters visiting India. The techniques varied, but mostly drew on Western watercolour technique, from which "transparency of texture, soft tones and modelling in broad strokes" were borrowed.[2]
Large-scale patrons included ColonelJames Skinner of Skinner's Horse fame, who had aRajput mother, and for natural history paintings,Mary Impey, wife ofElijah Impey, who commissioned over three hundred for theImpey Album, and theMarquess Wellesley, brother of thefirst Duke of Wellington, who had over 2,500. There were equivalent movements, but much smaller, around the French and Portuguese possessions in India, and in other South Asian areas likeBurma andCeylon.
The French-born Major-GeneralClaude Martin (1735–1800), latterly based inLucknow, commissioned 658 paintings of birds, includingBlack Stork in a Landscape, now in theMetropolitan Museum of Art in New York.[3]
Some notable artists includeMazhar Ali Khan, who worked on Thomas Metcalfe'sDelhi Book, and was part of a dynasty of miniature artists, the patriarch of which,Ghulam Ali Khan, had worked forWilliam Fraser on a similar commission known as theFraser Album, with over 90 paintings and drawings, mostly painted in 1815 to 1819. The Fraser Album came to light in Fraser's papers only in 1979; they are now dispersed. Mazhar Ali Khan, like his uncleGhulam Murtaza Khan, also painted portraits of the last Mughal emperors and their courts. The art historiansMildred Archer and Toby Falk, say of the Fraser Album: "Although we can never know for certain who painted each Fraser picture, we can be sure on stylistic grounds that they are the work of a single family, that of Ghulam Ali Khan. Although the finest figure drawings among the Fraser pictures are technically superior to known portraits signed by Ghulam Ali Khan, those of the Gurkhas, the recruits, and some of the single figures such as Kala and Umeechund must be by another member of his family".[4]
TheDelhi Book orReminiscences of Imperial Delhi is an album including 120 paintings in Company style, commissioned in 1844 bySir Thomas Metcalfe, the Company's Agent at the Mughal court after the murder of Fraser in 1835. Most are byMazhar Ali Khan, and show the final years of the Delhi court, as well as local monuments. The book is now in theBritish Library in London.[5]
Paintings were mostly on paper, but sometimes onivory, especially those from Delhi. They were mostly intended to be kept in portfolios or albums; themuraqqa or album was very well established among Indian collectors, though usually includingcalligraphy as well, as least in Muslim examples. The style developed in the second half of the 18th century, and by the early nineteenth century production was at a considerable level, with many of the cheaper paintings being copied by rote. By the 19th century many artists had shops to sell the work and workshops to produce it.
The arrival ofphotography was a direct blow for the style, but it survived into the 20th century, Ishwari Prasad ofPatna, who died in 1950, being perhaps the last notable exponent. In the late 19th century the British established several Schools of Art, where a yet more Westernised version of the style was taught, later in competition with other styles.
