IAS Prelims preparation 2018
Day 37 (April 29, 2017)
Topics of the day: History VIII NCERT Part II Chapter 4 key points
Thomas Daniell and his nephew William Daniell were the most famous of the artists who came to India in 1785 and stayed for seven years, journeying from Calcutta to northern and southern India. They produced some of the most evocative picturesque landscapes of Britain’s newly conquered territories in
India.
Portrait – A picture of a person in which the face and its expression is prominent.
Johann Zoffany, a famous portrait painter who came to India.
Nawab Muhammad Ali Khan of Arcot commissioned two visiting European artists, Tilly Kettle and George Willison, to paint his portraits, and gifted these paintings to the King of England and the Directors of the East India Company.
Mural – A wall painting.
Scroll painting Painting on a long roll of paper that could be rolled up.
In Bengal, around the pilgrimage centre of the temple of Kalighat, local village scroll painters (called patuas) and potters (called kumors in eastern India and kumhars in north India) began developing a new style of art.
Raja Ravi Varma was one of the first artists who tried to create a style that was both modern and national. Ravi Varma belonged to the family of the Maharajas of Travancore in Kerala, and was addressed as Raja. He mastered the Western art of oil painting and realistic life study, but painted themes from Indian
mythology.
In Bengal, a new group of nationalist artists gathered around Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951), the nephew of Rabindranath Tagore. They rejected the art of Ravi Varma as imitative and westernised, and declared that such a style was unsuitable for depicting the nation’s ancient myths and legends.
Abanindranath and Nandalal Bose were famous painters who followed an earlier style in their paintings but with a modification.