Discover colonial India through the paintings of William Hodges

A View of the Fort of Agra on the River Jumna by William Hodges
| Photo Credit: DAG

A View of the Fort of Agra on the River Jumna painted by William Hodges in 1786 shows the Taj Mahal as a wispy outline lost in an aquatint dream. In the foreground, men propel boats on the Yamuna, people stand on its sandy banks, and beyond the dense shrubbery that crowds it rises the ramparts of Agra fort, menacing and vast.

For many a Briton in the late 1700s, the painting perhaps served as the first glimpse of India’s most famous architectural landscape. It was nearly two hundred years after the East India Company had first sailed to India’s shores and begun to trade and rule that William Hodges came to the subcontinent as a pioneer of sorts to “remedy Europe’s visual ignorance of India”.

The book that accompanies the exhibition William Hodges and the Prospect of India
| Photo Credit:
DAG

DAG, Delhi, showcases the first-ever exhibition of the full set of 48 aquatints of Select Views in India engraved by Hodges. Curated by Giles Tillotson, senior VP, Exhibitions, DAG, the show accompanied by a book, traces Hodges journey though Bengal, Bihar and the United Provinces, freezing in colours of dun, green and blue, the India of the day.

Hodges had accompanied explorer James Cook on his second voyage to the Pacific islands, capturing its locations and people in landscape painting. “His travels in the South Pacific by ship alerted him to atmospheric effects. He also learnt a lot about unfamiliar civilisations,” says Giles.

William Hodges
| Photo Credit:
DAG

Spurred by a sense of adventure for the unfamiliar, Hodges journeyed East and met Warren Hastings, then Governor-General, on his voyage to Calcutta in 1780. It was a time when the Company was flexing its military muscle — the First Anglo-Maratha war was on and Hastings ensured a safe passage for Hodges as he wove his way around the country and in and out of battle zones.  

Travelling westwards, Hodges sailed up the wide-rolling Hooghly and the Ganga to Murshidabad and Rajmahal, through Benares and Allahabad, to Agra and Gwalior, pausing along the way to capture vignettes of life and monuments, thus becoming the first professional British painter to put together an extensive corpus on colonial India. “Hodges deployed the English aesthetic known as the Picturesque, in which he was trained. This tends to emphasise ruin and irregularity, avoiding symmetry and order. So the vision of India suggests a place in decline,” says Giles.

A view of the Musjd at Jionpoor
| Photo Credit:
DAG

The symbols of British India — pennants and red coats, bonnets and pith helmets — are ignored in Hodges’ paintings. Instead, he turns his brush to capturing cities and towns that once were stars during the heyday of Mughal rule. “Hodges was little interested in British India. His aim was to show his compatriots what India’s own civilisations and landscape looked like,” says Giles.

The paintings feature mouldering ruins, peaceful villages and placid rivers with people engaged in daily chores. The light is often meridional and the sepia ink captures a mood that is almost like a memory of an India long forgotten. “The works on display are all aquatints. He has then added watercolour by hand. The Picturesque favours such a controlled palette. The use of vibrant colours to capture India’s vitality is a feature of later European art, from the late 19th Century,” adds Giles.

A View of the Great Pagoda at Tanjore
| Photo Credit:
DAG

In A View of Chinsura, Hodges paints the Government House with the Old Dutch Church on the waterfront and the bell tower in shades of white and brown. It is perhaps a rare record of these buildings as they were demolished in 1990. Shades of green and gold crowd the landscape in A View in the Jungle Terry, a painting that celebrates the forests in the foothills of the Himalayas. Closer home, Hodges brings alive the great Pagoda at Tanjore, offering the viewer a glimpse of life along a great cultural icon of the South. “Hodges saw himself as exploring aspects of India’s cultural history, primarily for European consumption in his own time,” says Giles.

Hodges painted in tones of nostalgia, and today’s audience gets to view an India that is fast fading into memory.

The exhibition is on at DAG, 22 A, Janpath Road, Windsor Place, New Delhi till January 25; 11am-7pm.