Indian Renaissance

British Romantic Art and the Prospect of India

By Hermione de Almeida and George H. Gilpin

Ashgate-Lund Humphries / Paul Mellon Foundation, London, 2006; Routledge, London, 2016.

Indian Renaissance was awarded the 2007 Book Prize of the Association of Historians of British Art.

• Reviews of Indian Renaissance

'This important text offers an original and very welcome addition to the literature on the art and aesthetics of British India during the early period of colonization; as such it contributes significantly to the increasing debate over British art's relation to imperial history, as well as forcing a reconsideration of the changing ways in which India was perceived by the British during this period.' Geoff Quilley, National Maritime Museum, London

'This ranging and detailed study seriously complicates our notions of the place of India in the Romantic imagination. Lavishly and intelligently illustrated, Indian Renaissance persuasively argues that images of India were crucial to late-18th and early-19th-century Europe, and to Romanticism itself. This is a book Romanticists will need to read and absorb visually–and to own.'

J. Paul Hunter, University of Virginia

‘… the authors are adept at synthesizing recent scholarship and combining the results with their own fresh insights. Artists whose work is spotlighted in Indian Renaissance take on added import in the book's context. … the orderliness of its layout and the lengths to which an idea is allowed to proliferate reveal how devoted research and passionate writing … can lead to enriching paths of thought. … Giving British artists in India their due, not merely by examining their work but also by staking an ambitious claim for its significance, this books merits attention. That it also proposes for the origin and political usefulness of English Romanticism tenets important for art history and for literature studies makes it required reading.’ Barbara Grosclose, Ohio State University, College Art Association Reviews

‘This fascinating exploration by Hermione de Almeida and George H. Gilpin continues a strong series of studies, 'British Art and Visual Culture since 1750: New Readings', which attempts to unpack the social history, consumption, and display of British visual culture. This valuable addition, Indian Renaissance, gallantly strives to redress balances and bring the Indian sub-continent back from the periphery of British cultural concerns… De Almeida and Gilpin's book is a thoroughly researched, exhaustive inquiry… The ability of the book to link political and social concerns with a unique visual aesthetic makes it a valuable addition to the study of this period of cultural history.’ Abraham Thomas, Victoria and Albert Museum, Romantic Textualities

‘… lavishly produced book… A particular strength of the book is its illustrations […] supported by extensive written descriptions… Indian Renaissance is an important and substantial intervention in the literature of the visual culture of early British India. It stands as a valuable work of reference; it succeeds in asserting the central role of the visual in the development of the idea of India in British discourses of the time; and it makes a clear case for the importance of that idea to the development of the Romantic Movement.’ Prasannajit de Silva, University of Sussex, Art History

'Indian Renaissance, cultural history of verve and genuine utility, is a massive advance into the understanding of British art, culture, "orientalism", and empire. Assessing adventurous, reportorial images from a score of English artists and situating them historically within the cultural and political contexts of 1780 to 1840, the authors show how the Romantic vistas available to Turner became acquisitive visions - prospects of empire -and, notably in Blake, anti-imperialistic prophecies. Vigorous opening paragraphs on the man-tiger organ and other booty from Tipu Sultan's fall at Seringapatam prepare the reader for an exhilarating journey beyong tiger, banyan, and decorated caves towards elegiac awareness of desecration.…For historians of British India and students of literature, the work has earned much more than the praise already awarded it in reviews by art historians.’ Carl Woodring, Columbia University, The Wordsworth Circle

‘Indian Renaissance is a massive labor of love and scholarship, rightly acclaimed…for its significant contributions to rewriting British Romanticism's cultural discovery of India… Its attentive descriptions of the visual works themselves are more generous than most art historical accounts yet published on British artists in India. … Indian Renaissance will be essential reading for Romanticists for some time to come.’ Elizabeth Helsinger, University of Chicago, Keats-Shelley Journal

‘…this is a rich and scholarly book, its plates both in colour and black and white exceptionally well produced. It is a volume for which both the authors and the publisher, Ashgate, are to be commended.’ Richard Cronin, University of Glasgow, Romanticism

‘(a) fascinating tome… immensely detailed, indeed exhaustive but never exhausting text … No aspect of the British view of India seems to have been unexplored…’ www.artnewsletter.com

'.… a welcome addition to the field of British Indian studies. The authors have ... made a significant contribution to the study of the role of art and the development of British imperial identity and ideology ... this book is original, fresh, engaging ... The text is a must for anyone interested in British Romanticism. It stands apart from previous publications on British artists working on the subcontinent in that it avoids the cliché biographical or descriptive approach. Instead de Almeida and Gilpin focus on analysis shedding light on significant questions such as how the desire to dominate another culture influenced the subjects of art works….Through the well-researched discussion of various themes, the writers demonstrate the evolution of an imperial art form that supported British identity and was the foundation for British Romantic art at home. This will additionally appeal to readers interested in colonialism, post-colonialism, eighteenth and early nineteenth century British studies and its theories of ideology.’ Mary Ann Steggles, University of Manitoba, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies

'Edward Said in his controversial work Orientalism (1978) holds Western writers guilty of presenting a distorted image of the Orient and Orientals saying they wrote in a style for restructuring and having authority over the Orient. Indian Renaissance is a step towards meeting some of Said's criticisms and a welcome addition to our understanding of this great subcontinent's affect upon the writers of the Romantic Period. The book tells us it was the English Romantic artists who travelled to India first to illustrate it and create the basis for an Indian Renaissance in British Romantic Culture, de Almeida and Gilpin write with erudition to convince us of this.'

Geoffrey C. Bond, D.L., Vice President, Byron Society

‘…[an] extraordinary and detailed survey of British art in late 18th and early 19th centuries and of the visual cultures in the English Romantic movement…This is a good social history shored up by many pictures…’ Choice

‘Indian Renaissance comes lavishly illustrated with over 180 black-and-white prints and 60 color plates, and is a welcome addition to the growing literature on orientalism in general and British Indian visual culture in particular… offers a stunningly comprehensive account of British artistic practice in India… constructs a unique and innovative archive of British romantic art in India, providing a genealogy of British romanticism that is as innovative as it is convincing.’ Zahid R. Chaudhary, Princeton University, Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History

Additional Information on Indian Renaissance

• Description: Indian Renaissance: British Romantic Art and the Prospect of India is the first comprehensive examination of British artists whose first-hand impressions and prospects of the Indian subcontinent became a stimulus for the Romantic Movement in England; it is also a survey of the transformation of the images brought home by these artists into the cultural imperatives of imperial, Victorian Britain. The book proposes a second – Indian – Renaissance for British (and European) art and culture and an undeniable connection between English Romanticism and British Imperialism. Artists treated in-depth include James Forbes, James Wales, Tilly Kettle, William Hodges, Johann Zoffany, Francesco Renaldi, Thomas and William Daniell, Robert Home, Thomas Hickey, Arthur William Devis, R. H. Colebrooke, Alexander Allan, Henry Salt, James Baillie Fraser, Charles Gold, James Moffat, Charles D'Oyly, William Blake, J. M. W. Turner and George Chinnery.

• Contents by Chapter Title: Foreword. Part I: The idea of India: tiger, tree and cave; Tigers of all stripes; The great Banyan tree of India; The Cave Temple of Elephanta: eroticism and art; The Indian prospect in English Romantic art and literature; Sanskrit translations for an Indian Renaissance; The ideal of India: ancient India as the uroffenbarung of the Romantic era. Part II: Oriental fantasies and Indian prospects: Tilly Kettle's theater of India; The dancing girl of Faizabad; Artists and traders at Oudh; Edenic nights and everyday living; The paradise of the Nayars; Natural paradise and natural history. Part III: English Romantic art and the Indian prospect: The Royal Academy and the prospect of India; Patronage of learning – by a Governor General; Hodges' Indian sublime; Temple gloom and rural complexity; Conversations in Calcutta abd Oudh; The legacy of Clive and Hastings; Part IV: Storming Seringapatam: The drama and romance of empire: Little boys lost; Romantic, revolutionary Mysore; Storming Seringapatam; Imperial vision: the progress from Cornwallis to Wellesley; The view from the hill-forts. Part V: Thomas Daniell and the picturesque possession of India: 'Times are changed': early and late views of Calcutta; Travel and picturesque possession; Oriental Scenery: from Bengal to Madras, 1795-97; Twelve 'singular' Antiquities of India, 1799-1800; Objects and scenes of conquest, 1801-1803; Twenty-Four Landscapes composed too perfectly, 1804-1805; Singular India, 1808. Part VI: Dark prospects in the light of empire: 'Something new' – the freaks of gold; Devolution of an Indian prospect; Missionaries of empire; The imperial sublime of James Baillie Fraser; Savage forms and natural landscapes for the imperial traveler; Charles D'Oyly – the view from an elephant's back. Part VII: Elegies to an Indian Renaissance: Empire follows art: the retrospections of Hodges and Zoffany; Blake's prophecies against empire; Blake's 'Indian' epic; Turner and the dragons of empire; George Chinnery: the last Romantic artist of India; The prospect from a distance; Select bibliography. Index.

• Imprint: Ashgate
• Series: British Art and Visual Culture since 1750 New Readings
• Illustrations: Includes 60 colour and 180 b&w illustrations
• Published: February 2006
• Format: 260 x 230 mm
• Extent: 352 pages
• Binding: Hardback
• ISBN: 978-0-7546-3681-6
• BL Reference: 758.9'954
• LoC Control No: 200504273