Tracing 250 years of Indian portraiture

Documenting 250 years of Indian portraiture, an exhibition here brings together the work of artists like Raja Ravi Varma, Rabindranath Tagore, Jamini Roy, M.F. Hussain and F.N. Souza, to name just a few, and brings alive a bygone era.

"Indian Portraits: The Face of a People" that opened at the Delhi Art Gallery in Hauz Khas Village Tuesday and will run till Oct 26, traces the art of modern portraiture that came to India nearly three centuries ago by artists from Europe.

"In the 18th century, European artists came to India and started getting enough work in British India. But at the same time, they were increasingly drawn to painting the princes. Indian artists became threatened by this," exhibition curator Kishor Singh told IANS.

"So, there was immense pressure on Indian artists to learn the western style of painting, which was more of oil on canvas. It was the same time when artists started painting in photograph style," he added.

It wasn't an easy task for Kishor Singh, who is also the head of exhibitions at Delhi Art Gallery, to compile this handsomely-curated exhibition.

It took him six years and going through more than 31,000 works from the archives of the gallery before he was able to form a storyboard that served as an anthology of portraits in India.

"If you go through the exhibition, you will realise in the very early portraits, artists would paint common people, especially women. You will not find paintings of royal families," Kishor Singh explained.

"So these portraits were a representation of that era and encapsulate the changes the society underwent," he added.