Patna Painting

The School of Painting is an example of what came to be referred to as the “Company” art, or as Rai Krishna Das called it the “Firangi” art. At the collapse of the Mughal rule the artists horridly left the central court. The dispersal resulted in fresh impetus to painting in the Pahari Hindu Courts of Northern India, and on the other hand an Anglo-Indian style of painting which was largely concentrated at the centres of British commerce and trade, or more appropriately “Company settlements”. The rise of this style of painting followed the emergence of European trading and administrative communities, and its course reflects the changing disposition of power and wealth. It marks the fusion of Eastern and Western taste which occurred in the nineteenth century and mirrors the interests and artistic fashions of the period. The school is, in fact, a summary of the complicated interplay of European and Indian cultures in the nineteenth century. This work is among the very few available on this important style of painting. The book analysis the attitudes and interests of Europeans and Indians in the nineteenth century by enumerating the influences which fused to produce the Patna School of Painting.