A treasure trove of artefacts from Kolkata’s past

Subject: History

Section: Art and Culture

Photographs, sketches, pieces of gold, silver recovered from a warehouse
Company Painting
- Company style or Company painting (kampani kalam) is a term for a hybrid Indo-European style of paintings made in India by Indian artists, many of whom worked for European patrons in the British East India Company or other foreign Companies in the 18th and 19th centuries.
- The style blended traditional elements from Rajput and Mughal painting with a more Western treatment of perspective, volume and recession.
- Most paintings were small, reflecting the Indian miniature tradition, but the natural history paintings of plants and birds were usually life size.
Techniques
- The technique varied but mostly was drawn upon western water colour technique, from which “transparency of texture, soft tones and modelling in broad strokes” were borrowed from west.
- Paper was mostly used for these paintings. Ivory was also used.
- They were mostly intended to be kept in portfolios or albums; the muraqqa or album was very well established among Indian collectors, though usually including calligraphy as well, as least in Muslim examples