Text of the Lecture
delivered at the British Council, New Delhi, 26 November 2009 to mark the
Exhibition at the Delhi NGMA of Paintings/Photographs from the Victoria and
Albert Museum, London
What does a
painting—made 150 years ago or more—say about the places or the people or the
buildings it depicts? Does it say merely one thing? Or more? Is such a painting
to be seen primarily as an expression of artistic talent and individual
perception? Is it the equivalent of high art? Is it a
picture postcard? Or is it a historical document? Especially when it records
ways of living or places that have disappeared? And if they have completely or partially disappeared,
how does one decide how accurately they are recorded in such paintings? In
other words, what do we make of such paintings? How do we understand them,
appreciate them, utilise them?
As
a professional architect working in the field of conservation and history, early depictions of monuments, cities, gardens and
landscapes of India
interest me greatly. I remember my elation some years ago on finding two drawings
of the Mughal Red Fort of Shahjahanabad drawn by British artists in the mid-19th
century.
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Delhi and surrounding
countryside 1857
A. Maclure |
 |
Delhi before the Seige, 1857,
John Luard |
The Red Fort, as we all perhaps know, is one of
the most unique urban palace complexes in the world—and one which has only 10
percent of its original structures remaining today. Hence my elation, at
finding (or so I thought) vital information that could help me to piece
together how the inside of the 17th century Fort looked before so
much of it was destroyed in the War of 1857 and its aftermath.
My
elation soon gave way to surprise. The drawings
portrayed a different scenario altogether. Where was the complex
configuration of the Red Fort’s many courtyards? And its palaces, pavilions,
gateways, streets, and orchards within and around these courtyards? On
comparing the drawings with archival records as well as the existing Mughal buildings in the Fort, I realized
that the drawings employed a great deal of
artistic license. So much so that the inner features of the Fort and even its
outer profile were almost completely transformed in these drawings! In place of
the successive airy arcades of the many single-storey
palace-pavilions punctuated by marble screens and cooled by fountain-courts
and gardens, there was one towering building sitting isolated within an open area. It was in
fact, the image of a stately English home entered
through a wide driveway flanked by trees and shrubbery, made Oriental
with a generous topping of bulbous onion domes!
Since
then, I have been cautious about deriving any direct clues about historical
places from such paintings. That does not nonetheless imply that they are useless
as records. On the contrary, these paintings do give important information especially
when they depict places which are not as complex or as large as the Red Fort. And
they say as much about the places they represent as about the people who drew
them and the times in which they were painted. They are not just ‘ways of
seeing’ but also ‘ways of saying’ whatever individual artists thought was
important to represent. Even the act of choosing to draw a particular monument
out of hundreds of others, is an expression of an artist’s way of saying
something. But how does a viewer in the 21st century understand and interpret these
ways?
Let
me try to explain this through the example of two architectural monuments
featured in the present traveling exhibition. Even if one did not know anything
about when and how these paintings were made, it is quite easy for a viewer in
the Indian context to understand what they are saying. Most of us would easily recognize
the sites that these two paintings depict. The structures are drawn quite
recognizably for what they are. It is unlikely that any viewer, especially a
Dilliwala, would confuse them with any other historical building.the first is quite evidently the Jantar Mantar at Delhi, and the second is the Jama Masjid in Shahjahanabad or old Delhi as most of us refer to it today - both important ‘monuments’ in
the built landscape of Delhi. The way in which the people and the surrounding topography
and landscape are shown in these drawings, quite clearly places the images in a
time that is past. So what they are saying and their way of saying it seems
quite realistic and straightforward.
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| ‘Eastern Gate of the Jummah Masjid at Delhi', Thomas Daniell |
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| ‘Ancient Observatory, Delhi’, William Simpson |
But is it? When we
come to know when they were painted and in what circumstances, we realize that there
is much more to them than meets the eye at first glance. To begin with, how we
see them now is not the way in which the artists expected them to be seen. Ironically,
these paintings were never meant to be seen primarily by Indians or even by Europeans
living within India.
They were painted for a European, particularly a British audience back in Britain, who would
have had an interest in India,
through relations, friends or even personal visits at some time to this country.
However, whether or not they had been
to India,
these two sites would have been familiar to most of them even in the 19th
century. Why? Because Delhi,
as the imperial Mughal capital since 1648 ad,
was frequently visited by travelers. Some of these travelers left written
accounts of their journeys which were published and circulated widely in their
own countries. Hence, the choice of the Jama Masjid and the Jantar Mantar -
both arresting, unusual and important buildings in Delhi, and both
well-documented in the accounts of earlier travelers.
So,
for instance, the Jama Masjid, whose construction was finished in about 1658 ad, is described just five years later by
the Frenchman Francois Bernier, one of the earliest Europeans to have lived in
and written about Shahjahanabad, the ‘new Delhi’ of that time. Bernier
describes ‘two edifices worthy of notice’ in this city apart from the Red Fort
(p. 278), and one of them is the Jama Masjid, ‘the principal mosque which is
conspicuous at a great distance’. He writes (p. 279) about ‘the ascent to the
three gates by means of five-and-twenty or thirty steps of beautiful and large
stones’, ‘the three magnificent entrances’ and that ‘Above the principal gate,
which greatly exceeds the others in grandeur of appearance, there are several
small turrets of marble that produce a fine effect’. In short, he gives a
complete verbal picture of the scene that we see in the painting above!
Not
just this, Bernier goes further and declares ‘I am satisfied that even in Paris,
a church erected after the model of this temple would be admired, were it only
for its singular style of architecture, and its extraordinary appearance’. Bernier’s
writings dedicated to King Louis XIV of France were published in Paris in 1670 and its
first English edition followed barely a year later. John Dryden’s play Aurangzebe first acted at the Royal
Theatre in London
in 1675 and revived again in the early 18th century, was derived
from Bernier’s text. Thus, the Jama Masjid, already known to a European
audience through texts, and associated in their minds with the might and magnificence
of Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, was a natural choice to be depicted in paintings.
The
Jantar Mantar, too, though not as old as the Jama Masjid, was a site frequently
visited and written about. Barely twenty years after it was made, the Austrian
Jesuit missionary Josef Tieffenthaler visited and wrote about the Delhi Jantar
Mantar. In another 50 years, by the end of the 18th century, the Delhi
Jantar Mantar’s value was recognized as an Observatory and it was written about
in the Asiatic Researches published
from Calcutta, first in an account of Delhi by W. Franklin who went to Delhi
with a party of surveyors dispatched by the East India Company Government of
Bengal, and later by William Hunter in a specific account of the astronomical
work of Sawai Jai Singh, the King who established the Observatory. By this time
the Observatory was ‘celebrated’ enough to warrant a visit not just by
travelers ‘in search of the Picturesque’ (such as Fanny Parks) but also
professional soldiers such as Major William Thorn who stopped here ‘on way back
to camp’ as a member of Lord Lake’s campaign in Delhi sometime in September
1803. It was also valued on account of its association with Sawai Jai Singh, who was
portrayed as a just and model king, different from the conventional western
image of Oriental despots. So the
Jantar Mantar was well known in both scholarly circles as well as in popular
travel accounts.
Paintings
of the Jama Masjid and the Jantar Mantar featured in many 18th and
19th century artists’ works. The pencil and watercolour drawing of the Delhi Jantar
Mantar in the present exhibition, was drawn by William Simpson, (on Paper, 1864,
V&A Museum 1146-1869). It is described as
‘one of Simpson’s most romantic paintings’ in the Gallery Guide.The aquatint of the Jama Masjid by Thomas Daniell (Plate 1 Oriental Scenery Part 1, 1795, V& A Museum no IS
242 (1) 1961), was also an important part of the set of drawings made by them.
As the first of a set of 24 Prints published by the Daniells in 1795, it was ‘the
first image produced by them to be seen by the wider British public’, as the Gallery
Guide points out. Both Simpson and the uncle and son team of Thomas and William
Daniell had some reputation as artists which they were seeking to capitalize on
and extend through their Indian drawings.
I
would like to explore the ways in which these well-known artists of their time have
looked at these two famous architectural buildings, and what their drawings as
first-time visitors to India,
have to say about these buildings.
We all know that even if there has been no deliberate attempt at
dramatizing a space, any account or representation is inevitably an individual
perception which can never be completely objective. Thus, first and
foremost, these paintings represent the artists’ personality in what they seek
to highlight or focus on, through the paintings while portraying
the sights they have seen. Taken alone, they are impressionistic views
(even when they seem to be completely realistic) of India as seen from the eyes
of visitors from a very different culture and context; with the express purpose
of making their fortune by employing their artistic talent to draw pictures of
the ‘mysterious east’ for audiences back home in Europe. For instance, William
Simpson (1823-1899) was commissioned to go to India by a well-known London lithography firm
to sketch well-known sites associated with the revolt
of 1857. Thomas and William Daniell came to India a little more than half a
century before Simpson, again with the intent of drawing picturesque views of
the dramatic Indian sights for audiences back in England.
Though
only about 50 years separated the visits of the Daniells and Simpson, the
political circumstances were quite different during their visits. After 1857,
the British connection with India
was fraught with feelings not just of curiosity towards India and things
Indian, but also feelings of anger, contempt, and possession. The war of 1857 marked
a turning point in the relationship between India and Britain, and a
break in many of the older cultural, social and political institutions in India. Delhi as
the scene of intense fighting, the formal seat of the ‘Last Mughal’, as well as
the rallying point of the forces against the British, aroused particularly
strong feelings in the British public who had followed the events during 1857
with unabated interest. This meant that scenes in Delhi were invested with
many meanings.
The Daniell
paintings as pre-1857 do not have the additional reportage of the post-1857
paintings. However, though they may be said to be without an obvious political
agenda, they obviously had a commercial angle to fulfill. They needed to be
dramatic enough, exotic enough and enticing enough to appeal to a large section
of the British public, in order to sell well. So the Jama Masjid painting, the
first painting of the Daniell’s Set of Views, does not show the entire Mosque
itself, but focuses on one part of it - its Eastern Gateway, the grandest
gateway of the Mosque as told earlier by Bernier. This is in keeping with the
style employed by the Daniells in their other paintings as well. Thus, while they
are known to have used the camera obscura to ensure faithful documentation of
details of landscape or building, they often deliberately played up elements of
the natural and built landscape—sometimes substantially—to achieve greater
compositional effect. This is clearly demonstrated in
the book India,
Yesterday and Today, Aquatints by Thomas and William Daniell, where the
revisited sites of many of these sketches have been photographed from the same
position as those of the original aquatints. Nonetheless, despite this playing
up of certain elements, the Daniells late eighteenth
and early nineteenth century aquatints of various parts of India, are an
important reference for life in those years (1795–1803).
William
Simpson’s objective of coming to India was in a sense more focused.
Simpson came to India
after acquiring some fame in documenting the Crimean war of 1854, and was
instructed ‘to sketch well-known sites associated with the heavy fighting of
1857 in and around Delhi’
(Gallery guide, Simpson’s biography). Interestingly, Felice Beato, a
photographer who had like Simpson, acquired fame in covering the Crimean War
also chose to record both the Jantar Mantar and the Jama Masjid. The choice of
Jantar Mantar is interesting, since it does not appear to have featured at all
in the fighting of 1857, which is what both Simpson and Beato were supposed to
cover. So, in choosing to record this, we might say that they were going
‘beyond their brief’! The Jama Masjid, was of course the scene of direct
fighting, but even if it had not been, as one of the most imposing buildings in
Delhi it could
not have escaped Beato’s attention, as indeed it did not of the Daniells.
This is the reason
perhaps that the Daniell painting is quite simply titled ‘Eastern Gate of the Jummah
Masjid at Delhi’.
The Simpson painting on the other hand, is more grandly called ‘Ancient
Observatory, Delhi’.
Perhaps Simpson was trying to justify his inclusion of the Observatory by
investing it with an obvious ancientness? It is also interesting that Simpson
has chosen to highlight the ruinous aspect of the Jantar Mantar, throwing in
some skeletons next to emaciated twigs and a lean dog for good measure. The
Daniells, conversely choose to depict the Jama Masjid as an intact structure,
in good ‘working condition’ and its magnificence heightened by the majesty of
the elephant procession in front of it. Would the artists have actually
witnessed these scenes in front of the buildings? Or have the human and animal
subjects in the foreground been transposed on to the monument for artistic
effect?
On the face of it, it appears unlikely that
two buildings in the same general area, subject to the same climatic
conditions, would have weathered so differently during a similar time-span. The
Daniell painting was drawn a hundred and fifty years after the construction of
the Jama Masjid; similarly Simpson’s painting of the Jantar Mantar was also
made about a hundred and fifty years after its
construction. So, is it reasonable to believe that one building could have
degraded so much over a hundred and fifty years ago, while the other was in
such good condition?
The Jama Masjid was within the walls of the
imperial Mughal Capital, the most important congregational mosque which the
Mughal Emperors also visited for prayer. Though Delhi had already been summarily sacked by
the Persian King Nadir Shah and then by Afghan marauders fifty years before the
Daniells’ visit, life within the city is reported to have revived fairly
quickly, with its social and cultural institutions in place. Contemporary
accounts of the looting of the city state that ‘the Chandni Chouk, the Daribah
Bazaar, and the buildings around the Masjid-i-Jama were set fire to and reduced
to ashes’ (Tazkira of Anand Ram Mukhlis). However, they do not mention specific
destruction of the Jama Masjid itself, which as a place of worship of the same
faith as that of the invaders is unlikely to have been vandalized. Even the
Jats and the Marathas who attacked Delhi
in the late 18th century probably did not
desecrate the Masjid. It is more than likely thus, that the Jama Masjid was more
or less as it was depicted by the Daniells.
About fifty years after the Daniells painted
and published their view of the Jama Masjid, Emily Metcalfe, newly arrived from
England,
journeyed from Calcutta
to Delhi to
join her father, the British Resident of Delhi, Sir Thomas Metcalfe. This is
how she writes in her diary of the last stage of her journey to Delhi:
‘I could not sleep
because I was so excited at the thought of seeing Daddy before dawn. At about
one o’clock in the morning I looked out of my palanquin, and saw in the
glorious moonlight the minarets of the Juma Masjid, the great Mohammedan mosque
that is one of the chief beauties of Delhi and of Northern India.’ (p.122, Golden Calm)
Perhaps Emily had seen
one of the paintings of the Daniells in the houses of her aunts and uncles in England?
Whether or not she had, it is interesting how the same sight extolled by
Bernier’s journal in the mid-17th century was translated into a painting
by the Daniells in the late 18th century and again evoked by Emily
Metcalfe in the mid-19th century. The Jama Masjid is also
practically the first building that Emily’s father, Sir Thomas Metcalfe, chose
to write about in his Reminiscenses of
Imperial Delhie. However, the painting commissioned by him to illustrate
his description of the Jama Masjid, the ‘Great Cathedral’ as he calls it, shows
the interior of the actual mosque, and does not confine itself to the view of
the grand steps.
The Jantar Mantar on the other hand was well
outside the then city walls, a mile and a quarter south-west. Its patron’s kingdom was many
miles away, in Jaipur, and it had ceased to be a working Observatory shortly
after Nadir Shah’s attack. The circle of the full moon, the glow of the fire in
Simpson’s painting lend both romance and mystery to the strange shapes of the instruments
of this observatory. Indeed, the very reasons that make us believe that the
Observatory may indeed actually have been in a ruinous and deserted state, make
it improbable that Simpson would have actually sketched the Observatory by the
light of the full moon. The area of Delhi
at that time and even later was home to wild animals ranging from tigers to
jackals; and the Jantar Mantar outside the protection of the city walls would
not have been a safe proposition to visit at night. However, it may also be
that by highlighting the fact that an ancient Observatory had been allowed to
fall to ruins, Simpson was driving home a point more in keeping with his
commission about portraying scenes of British victory. Namely, that even
ancient important monuments were allowed to fall to ruin and decay in the reign
of the Mughals? It is also a fact that after 1857, the entire Indian population of Shahjahanabad was turned out of the
city. With no recourse to food or shelter, they may have actually taken refuge
in the abandoned observatory’s masonry structures. Simpson may have actually
seen such refugees or perhaps heard of their stories.
So what direct
information can we derive from the paintings about the buildings? We are told
that Simpson arrived in Calcutta in 1859 and traveled over India, making his
‘rapid pencil drawings’ which were finished as water-colours after his return
to London in 1862. So about two to three years elapsed between
drawing his subjects, and preparing them for publication. There was thus, a
substantial time gap between seeing, recording and finishing his paintings.
Nonetheless, if we consider the Jantar Mantar and how it has been rendered, we
find that its instruments are more or less recognizable. We can see the Samrat
Yantra, the Misra Yantra in the distance with the guard house of the
Observatory next to it, and the pair of very broken down JaiPrakash Yantras in
the foreground next to the skeleton. There is another platform with a roud
disc on it shown before the West JaiPrakash Yantra which has since then
disappeared. We know that Jai Singh built metal instruments at the Delhi observatory before
making his immovable masonry instruments here. Perhaps the unidentifiable
platform in front of the JaiPrakash Yantras was the base for some such metal
instrument? We cannot really say, since there is no specific textual evidence
which describes a Yantra of this shape next to the JaiPrakashs.
The
proportions of the Samrat are impeccable, and much like the extant Yantra
today. It is in far better shape than the other Yantras depicted here. This is
in sync with historical records. Thus, while Syed Ahmad Khan, in his book about the historic buildings of Delhi, Atharal
Sanadid, first published in 1846-7, states quite clearly that the Jantar
Mantar’s ‘instruments have fallen into disuse and are almost in ruins’, it is
recorded that the newly formed Archaeological
Society of Delhi requested Raja Rama Singh II of Jaipur to conserve the
Observatory. As a result, in 1852 the conservation of the most imposing Yantra,
the Samrat, was undertaken with funds and expertise from Jaipur. This
conservation would have taken place less than a decade before Simpson’s visit,
and perhaps explains the reason why the Samrat looks in so much better shape
than the other visible Yantras.
However, when we compare Simpson’s drawing with a view of the Observatory at around the same time by a local artist commissioned by
the British Resident of Delhi, Sir Thomas Metcalfe, it shows something quite
different. It is the Samrat which appears more ruinous than the other Yantras,
especially the JaiPrakash Yantras which are shown to be fairly intact. The
drawing depicts scattered mounds of earth and occasional crumbling edges of the
masonry instruments, set amidst fairly pleasant grassy stretches with trees in
the distance - a far cry from the desolation of Simpson’s scene. The
perspective is faulty and the proportions of the Yantras too are not as assured
as Simpson’s drawing. But should we automatically assume that a less skilled
artist will also be a less accurate observer and recorder? Not necessarily. In
fact, a more confident and skilled artist may actually find it simpler to
depart from reality, to fill in details from imagination. In the absence of
absolute corroborative information, these thoughts cannot be more than
speculations. Be that as it may, they demonstrate the selective nature of
perception and memory and explain why even an overwhelmingly recognisable
subject, when represented many times by different artists, does not appear exactly
the same in its different versions. The fact is that
it gets invested with different meanings despite being rendered in a natural or
figurative way.
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Jantar Mantar, Delhi mid
19th century
from The Golden Calm |
The
Daniells too had chosen to draw the Delhi Jantar Mantar in their collection of
views. Like Simpson, they focus on the Samrat Yantra; however the only other
recognizable Yantra in their drawing is the Misra in the distance. The
Observatory is not as obviously ruined as it is depicted in Simpson’s version.
In fact, though part of the Samrat’s lime-plaster has come off revealing its
underlying masonry, the Yantra itself is more or less complete. Again, if we
look at the larger historical view of the area, we realize that the Daniells
saw the Jantar Mantar before its conservation was undertaken in 1852, and after the attacks and vandalism on it by
the Jats. So, was it actually in worse shape than the Daniells painting? Or was
it in better shape than Simpson’s painting?
 |
Jantar Mantar, Delhi
late 18th century,
Aquatint by Thomas and William Daniell,
1808
after a drawing by Thomas Daniell 1789 |
We can look for at
least partial corroboration in another contemporary pictorial source – Beato’s
photograph of the Jantar Mantar. Both Beato's photograph and Simpson’s drawing date from
practically the same time. Beato’s photograph of the Jantar Mantar concentrates
on the steps of the Samrat, and underplays the exotic element that Simpson
seeks to highlight. Though Beato’s photograph does not cover as much of the
Yantras as does Simpson’s painting, it is difficult to say exactly how much of
the surroundings have been played up by Simpson. Nevertheless, the close up of
the Samrat reveals that while the steps of the gnomon and its surrounding parapet
are relatively intact, the dials of the Samrat
as well as the Misra Yantra in the background are indeed, at least
partially ruined.
 |
Jantar Mantar, Delhi mid
19th century,
Photograph: Felice Beato |
Beato,
like Simpson, also imposes props on his photograph though his props are quite different.
The thin Indians and the lean dog in Simpson’s painting are replaced by the
European in the sola topee. The European positioned on the steps of the Yantra,
perhaps for scale, perhaps to reflect the ascendancy of the British in the
Indian political and physical landscape is not a chance bystander or passerby
but is a deliberately added element to the photograph. The same European
appears in several of his other photographs too. However,
though they use different props, and appear to evoke very different images –
Beato’s still, stark and grainy planes and angles contrasted with Simpson’s
soft colours and movement, as much a constraint of their different mediums as
perhaps their individual artistic expressions - the underlying message in both
works appears to be the same, namely the desolation of the native landscape in
the aftermath of 1857.
 |
Jama Masjid, Delhi mid
19th century,
Photograph; Felice Beato
|
If we look at Beato's photograph of the Jama Masjid and its
surroundings, there is a more perceptible difference between it and the
Daniells painting. The Daniell painting is of course, almost
60 years before the Beato photograph. In this relatively short span of
time, the perception of the Jama Masjid underwent a dramatic change. Immediately
after the capture of Delhi,
there had been proposals to demolish the Mosque and build a cathedral in its
stead. The eastern (main) entrance depicted by the Daniells is closed in Beato’s photograph and the mosque is now entered from the south or north. (p.78,
Masselos and Gupta). The elephant procession and the open vistas beyond have
disappeared. In their place are clusters of houses and buildings surrounding
the roads leading up to the Masjid. They reflect the build-up in Shahjahanabad
in the 19th century, when it was peopled as much by Indians as by
Europeans, and the effect that its popularity as a favoured place of residence
as well as a centre for commerce and production had on the open spaces of the
city. Most of the structures around the Jama Masjid were
later cleared away by the British after 1857. (As in the Alkazi Collection picture, reproduced on p. 197, Red Fort of Shahjahanabad, A.S. Mukherji, OUP 2003)
It is also
revealing to contrast the manner in which the Jantar Mantar and the Jama Masjid
are presented in these older drawings and the manner in which they are
photographed today. Thus, practically all the older drawings of the Jantar
Mantar either only show the Samrat Yantra, the largest Yantra of the Delhi
Observatory, or give it prominence in the composition. Yet, today, almost all
images of the Delhi Jantar Mantar show not the Samrat, but the far smaller
Misra Yantra – ranging from the photograph printed on the ASI’s entrance
tickets to the coffee-table as well as the scholarly publications on the Jantar
Mantar. The reason for this is probably because the Observatory’s original
entrance has shifted ninety degrees, and the way in which it is now entered
means that the Misra Yantra, the last and smallest Yantra of the Observatory,
is encountered first of all. Similarly, most images of the Jama Masjid today either
focus on close-ups of the steps of the entrance gates or feature its internal
courtyard with the domes of the mosque looming up behind. Views such as those
that the Daniell painting depicts are physically difficult to draw or
photograph because of the crowding in of the mosque’s surroundings. This shows
the extent to which physical space and how we spatially approach a building or
a monument affects how we picture, redefine and represent our past.
Thus, to sum up, we see that individual and partly imaginative as they are, the paintings give important information about the immediate and the larger context of the scenes they depict. Moreover, they do not just document and evoke a time and a pace of life that is now lost, they also help to illustrate, elaborate and corroborate certain historical facts. And finally, they remind us of the importance of symbols in a people’s memory. As we completely overwhelm the original spatial and architectural quality of the Jama Masjid, and desecrate the Jantar Mantar under the guise of people's protets, it is time to realize the importance of how the past once appeared to inhabitants and to visitors - and what may lie in store for us if we forget completely.
 |
| Jantar Mantar, 19 November
2009 Hindustan Times |
