Company School Paintings

BANI THANI

india (KishanGarh), circa 1770

heiGht: 26 cm Width: 18 cm

Opaque watercolour heightened with gold on paper.

A portrait of Bani Thani, the legendary courtesan of Maharaja Savant Singh of Kishangarh (born 1699, reigned 1748-1764). With her luscious black locks of hair and delicate shoulders covered by a diaphanous gossamer veil, translucent to the point of near transparency yet imparting a piquant green to the lobe of her ear and her string of pearls, she faces left holding a carnation in her hennaed finger tips. She wears an earring with a jewelled lotus from which dangles a pendant teardrop jewel and a nose ring embellished with pearls.

Who was Bani Thani? According to B. N. Goswamy, who describes the celebrated Kishangarh painting of circa 1735, “The Boat of Love” now at the National Museum, New Delhi, by the greatest painter from the Kishangarh atelier, Nihal Chand, who is credited with the creation of this remarkable visage with long dreamy eyes and finely chiselled features:

“Bani Thani was not her real name, but a reference to her delicate form, tall and svelte, and fair of complexion. There has been much difference of opinion about her role, even whether a person like her existed at all, but her name comes up each time that one speaks of Kishangarh painting. That aquiline nose, the thrust-out chin, the thin lips, the high arched eyebrows; but, above all, those lotusbud like eyes that sweep across the face: starting from near the ridge of the nose, they take an upward curve, and end up almost close to the ear. These marked the courtesan’s face as much as Radha’s whenever we see her in paintings of this period from Kishangarh.”1

If she did in fact exist in reality, her striking features would have been observed, captured, stylised to a heightened degree and exaggerated by the master painter Nihal Chand who was born around 1705-1710 and died in 1782; he was active at Kishangarh over the reign of several rulers during a very long period of circa 1725 to 1782.2 According to Navina Haidar, he probably worked under the guidance of another great Mughal painter Bhavanidas, who also had a major period of work at Kishangarh.3 Haidar observes that Nihal Chand is rightly recognised as the creator of the inspired and influential style of painting that appeared in mid eighteenth century Kishangarh.

Our painting is later in date than the famous iconic image of Radha from circa 1740, attributed to Nihal Chand by most scholars and presumably inspired by the features of Bani Thani during its creation. This is in the Kishangarh Durbar Collection and widely published, most recently in Navina Haidar, “Nihal Chand” in Milo C. Beach, Eberhard Fischer and B. N. Goswamy (eds.), Masters of Indian Painting II: 1650-1900, 2011, p. 602, fig. 6. The features here are sharper and more pronounced in every way, with the jutting chin and almond eyes attenuated to a heightened degree of impossible elegance. The more naturalist rendering and softening of features of our painting, though clearly derived from the iconic image, suggest to us the later date of circa 1770.

Besides Bani Thani herself and the painter Nihal Chand, the third component in the genesis of the image is Savant Singh the poet-king of Kishangarh who wrote three books of ardent verse drawing inspiration from the devoted worship of Krishna under the pen name of Nagaridas, which means “Radha’s Slave” or the “Humble Servant of Radha”.

M. S. and D. S. Randhawa recall the local legend of how in 1731, an event took place that had a profound effect on the king’s career. Savant Singh’s stepmother employed a young slave girl as a singer in her palace and trained her in the art of poetry.4 Though she was twenty years younger than Savant Singh, she came to the notice of the young prince who fell in love with her and made her his mistress (pasvan). It is conjectured that the bloom of her youth and beauty not only aroused unholy thoughts in the hearts of men who saw her, but also provided inspiration to the Kishangarh artists to whom credit is given for invention of the Kishangarh facial formula.5 Stuart Cary Welch, writing at the time of his exhibition, A Flower from Every Meadow: Indian Paintings from American Collections, 1973, p. 56, cat. no. 27, says that the story of Bani Thani was discounted recently by the late Maharaja of Kishangarh.

Nihal Chand also created for Savant Singh images of Krishna with the same striking features to complement those of Radha. When Savant Singh relinquished his throne to his ambitious usurping younger brother Bahadur Singh, he retired to Vrindavan with Bani Thani where they wrote poetry together in a continuance of their dream-like existence and undying love. There they were visited by the great artist Nihal Chand.

Provenance: Spink and Son, London, 1997 Private English Collection

References: 1. B. N. Goswamy, The Spirit of Indian Painting: Close Encounters with 101 Great Works 1100-1900, 2014, pp. 452-454. See also the essay on the “Bower of Quiet Passion” attributed to Nihal Chand in B. N. Goswamy and Caron Smith, Domains of Wonder: Selected Masterpieces of Indian Painting, 2005, p. 94. 2. Navina Haidar, “Nihal Chand” in Milo C. Beach, Eberhard Fischer and B. N. Goswamy (eds.), Masters of Indian Painting II: 1650-1900, 2011, p. 595. 3. Ibid. 4. Mohinder Singh Randhawa and Doris Schreier Randhawa, Kishangarh Painting, 1980, pp. 8-9. 5. Ibid.

44

CAVALRYMAN OF SKINNER’S HORSE

india (haryana, hansi), circa 1815-1816

heiGht: 20.1 cm Width: 14.8 cm

Pencil and opaque watercolour heightened with gold on paper.

This elegant standing portrait depicts a cavalry man of Skinner’s Horse, an irregular cavalry regiment of the Indian Army raised in 1803 by James Skinner (Sikander Sahib) in the service of the East India Company. It was later renamed the 1st Bengal Lancers. The lancers of Skinner’s Horse wore yellow uniforms which were unique in the British Empire. This distinctive rich yellow, close in shade to mustard or saffron, led to the regiment being nicknamed the “Yellow Boys” or the “Canaries”.

Our cavalry man wears a red turban and a yellow kurta (long shirt) fastened by an intertwining green and red patka (sash) worn as a cummerbund into which is tucked his flintlock pistol. Though this is a standard English flintlock, it was probably made in India where there were a few English gunmakers that set up shop in the country. His right hand rests on the hilt of a sheathed talwar sword and a beautifully observed touch is the tip of the sheath resting on his boot rather than on the ground. He carries a black shield on his back. The shoulder sword holder is a baldric of typical Indian form with cusped and shaped ends.

In April 1815, William Fraser was appointed Commissioner for the Affairs of Garhwal in the Punjab Hills, necessitating a tour of the lower Himalayas to familiarise himself with the area, on which he was accompanied by his brother James. It was during their time in the Himalayan foothills that James took up drawing with great enthusiasm. At Saharanpur, on their way back from the Hills, James’s difficulties with drawing figures of local Indians and dissatisfaction with his own sketches led him to ask William to hire an Indian artist to take likenesses of servants and Gurkhas. These first pictures by an Indian artist, made at James’s request, were the genesis of the wonderful collection of Fraser pictures that have come to light.1

According to Mildred Archer and Toby Falk, the collection of over ninety coloured drawings by Indian artists found with the Fraser papers in 1979 have since been accepted as one of the finest groups of Company pictures yet known.2 Technically these drawings surpass all other Company pictures for their delicate realism, characterisation and subtle composition of groups.3 The success of Company pictures lies in the way in which an Indian artist was given freedom to exercise his talent with English encouragement and patronage, but not tuition or direct instruction by professional English painters, which would have had a very different result.4 By considering the Fraser pictures along with the documentation, especially the diaries and letters of James, who was a meticulous observer and detailed correspondent, as well as an amateur artist whose sketches produced two masterly series of aquatints, we can more fully understand the way in which English interaction with Indian artists created the Company paintings.5

The artist hired by James would probably have come from Delhi and would have been practised at drawing figures. Archer and Falk suggest that because James himself made several attempts at drawing Gurkhas, he would no doubt have shown his own drawings to the artist and it must have been James’s example that led to the European compositions of these groups, with their lines of interrelated standing figures, or single standing figures such as the present portrait, set against a plain background.6

On their return to Delhi, William hired an Indian painter at James’s request to sketch architectural subjects and figures of horsemen, officers, fakirs and camels, now sadly lost. When James left for Calcutta in June 1816, he left instructions with William for further drawings and William took an artist with him during his tours. James himself realised the potential of these portraits as a record of the great variety of Indian groups, their costumes and ways of life from unknown regions. They remain the earliest detailed visual record of people from the Hills and other parts of Rajasthan.7 By 1819, another forty pictures had been finished and sent to James in Calcutta by William.

The Fraser pictures are of special significance as they were made in the Delhi territory, an area not taken over by the British until after 1803, far from Calcutta where the finest Company pictures had hitherto been painted in a very different style.8 Company paintings in the Delhi region before the Fraser project were almost exclusively of architectural monuments so the Fraser pictures, depicting people and costumes in an area until now untouched by European presence or example, represent a radical new departure. Though we cannot know for certain who painted each Fraser picture as neither James or William recorded the painters’ names, Archer and Falk suggest that on stylistic grounds the paintings may be ascribed to a single family of painters, that of Ghulam Ali Khan.9

A number of subjects in the Fraser Album were members of the private regiment of Colonel James Skinner, a British military adventurer in India who was of Anglo-Indian descent and a great friend of William. Skinner, who pursued a lavish lifestyle in the manner of Indian princes and was famous for his eccentric character, raised a regiment of irregular cavalry known as “Skinner’s Horse” at his estate and farm at Hansi, the capital of ancient Haryana, founded in the eighth century. The town is to the north-west of Delhi. William bred horses on Skinner’s farm as an extra source of income and also because new breeding stock was a constant concern for the East India Company.10

Skinner’s troops were highly trained and extremely skilled, and they earned fame as the best light cavalry regiment of that time. Skinner had their uniforms specially designed, the signature colours being bright yellow and scarlet, leading to the moniker, “The Yellow Boys”. As early as August 1815, a few months after his appointment as Commissioner, William had been offered a rank in Skinner’s Horse, though it was not until October of 1817 that he received official permission to accept it from Charles Metcalfe, the Delhi Resident to whom he was accountable.11 William, with his experience of recruiting able men, was a great help to Skinner and many of William’s irregulars from the Nepal war were transferred to Skinner’s horse.12

The luminous, translucent colour is the perfected Company School technique of coloured drawing, akin to watercolour but with the additional use of more opaque pigments.

For an illustration of a Skinner cavalryman wearing a red jacket, see Archer and Falk, 1989, p. 120, pl. 112. Ummee Chund, the youth who saved William’s life by foiling an attempted assassination on 18th March 1819, is depicted in the full uniform of red jacket under the yellow coat of Skinner’s Horse on p. 44, pl. 18.

Provenance: William and James Baillie Fraser Sir John Richardson

John Patrick Richardson was born in London in 1924 to Sir Wodehouse Richardson and Patty (née Crocker). His father was a Quarter-Master General in the Boer War and the founder of the Army & Navy Stores in Britain. Sir Wodehouse died when John was five years old. He was sent away to boarding school and then enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art at age sixteen to pursue his artistic ambitions. At the outbreak of WWII, Richardson was called up for military service in the Irish Guards but very quickly contracted rheumatic fever and was invalided out of the army. He spent the rest of the war in London with his mother and siblings, working as an industrial designer and later writing for The New Observer. In 1949, Richardson met collector and art historian Douglas Cooper. They would become a couple for the next ten years, moving in 1952 to the Chateau de Castille in the South of France. Cooper introduced Richardson to many artists, including Picasso, Léger, and Braque who would all become close friends. In 1960, Richardson left Cooper and moved to New York City where he would organise several important exhibitions on Picasso and Braque. London-based auction house Christie’s asked Richardson to open their New York office and appointed him to run it for the next nine years. Following his time at Christie’s, Richardson joined M. Knoedler & Co. where he oversaw 19th and 20th century paintings. In 1980, John Richardson decided to dedicate himself to writing and focused on the biography of Picasso that he had begun thinking about during his years in France. The first of four planned volumes, A Life of Picasso, was published in 1991 and won a Whitbread Award. The second volume was published in 1996, and the third in 2007. Volume four was still in progress upon his death in 2019. Richardson was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 2012 for his service to the arts. In addition to the Picasso biographies, Richardson wrote a memoir in 1999, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and published a collection of essays in 2011 titled Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters.

“So diverse are the things that have come my way that I had to make a virtue of necessity and mix them all together …” said Sir John Richardson, renowned Picasso scholar, curator and bon vivant, referring to the eclectic collection that filled his lower Fifth Avenue loft. Richardson’s collection of art and objects included works by Picasso and Warhol, Old Master prints, Neo-classical busts, photographs, porcelain, furniture and colourful textiles acquired over a lifetime of travel around the world. Housed in the lush, bohemian interior of his New York City apartment that welcomed artists, academics and socialites alike, his collection represents the multi-layered life that Richardson lived and is his autobiography in “things”, providing a rare insight into the life of an extraordinary man.

Published: Mildred Archer and Toby Falk, India Revealed: The art and adventures of James and William Fraser 1801-35, 1989, p. 133, pl. 135.

Acknowledgement: We would like to that Robert Hales for his expert advice and kind identification of the weapons worn by our cavalryman of Skinner’s Horse.

References: 1. Mildred Archer and Toby Falk, India Revealed: The art and adventures of James and William Fraser 1801-35, 1989, p. 45. 2. Ibid., pp. 44-46. 3. Ibid., p. 40. 4. Ibid., p. 44. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., p. 45. 7. Ibid., p. 43. 8. Ibid., p. 45. 9. Ibid., p. 46. 10. Ibid., p. 17. 11. Ibid., p. 38. 12. Ibid., p. 39.