Dr Matthew Potter (Department of History of Art and Film, University of Leicester)
Imaging India: The ‘Indian Mutiny’ as a challenge to British Empire and Art
The Victorian British public had few opportunities to experience India firsthand: India was either seen logistically as a provider of raw materials for British industry or decoratively as a source of exotic fancy objects, for example, at the Indian Court of the Great Exhibition (1851) and the Cross Gallery in the South Kensington Museum (later the V&A) with the incorporation of East India Company’s India Museum (1880).
These material relationships were reinforced by ideological systems: an important example of this exists in Thomas Babington Macaulay’s work. Macaulay’s colonial service (1834-8) and historical writings were deeply interconnected. The principle of assimilation informed his bi-linguistic regime reforms in India, as well as his argument for the remodelling of colonial populations according to the standards of British national character, as expressed in The History of England from the Accession of James II (1848-59). In his essays on Lord Clive (1840) and Warren Hastings (1841) Indian affairs were addressed more directly and its people and culture were framed negatively as ‘tainted with all the vices of Oriental despotism’.
Earlier British artistic representations of imperialism in India conform to academic traditions of history painting such as Francis Hayman’s Lord Clive meeting with Mir Jafar after the Battle of Plassey (c.1762) and Edward Armitage’s The Battle of Meanee (1847). The ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’ (1756) was the first occasion when atrocities against British forces might have been represented, however only with the dominance of historical genre painting (focusing on anecdotal subjects of human interest instead of the actions of ‘great men’ of history) as a visual mode in the Victorian art market did the right conditions for accessible and sensational depictions of imperial crisis occur. The ‘Indian Mutiny’ (1857) happened at the perfect moment for these developments to be manifested in artistic form.
Alternative strategies were adopted by artists like Edward Armitage, who provided allegorical responses to the Mutiny in Retribution (1858), and Henry Nelson O'Neil, who painted genre accounts of the departure and return of troops in Eastward Ho! (1857) and Home Again (1858). Both artists, however, bypassed the thorny issue of reporting the events of Cawnpore. Sir Joseph Noel Paton’s In Memoriam (1858) was different. In its original version it showed sepoys bursting in with murderous intent for the ‘innocent’ British women and children at Cawnpore. Its sensational reception at the Royal Academy led Paton to repaint the sepoys with rescuing highlanders.
Not only did Paton try to create a new vision of instability and challenge visual conventions for the representation of imperial relations, but the alteration of the work in reaction to popular outcry demonstrates an important occasion when the British public articulated its attitudes towards India. Displayed at the International Exhibitions of Paris (1867) and Glasgow (1888) this work also contributed to growing debates about British India amongst foreign nations like France and Russia. In triggering art critical debate Paton’s In Memoriam was a central device in marshalling public opinion – not only about empire, but also art.
These material relationships were reinforced by ideological systems: an important example of this exists in Thomas Babington Macaulay’s work. Macaulay’s colonial service (1834-8) and historical writings were deeply interconnected. The principle of assimilation informed his bi-linguistic regime reforms in India, as well as his argument for the remodelling of colonial populations according to the standards of British national character, as expressed in The History of England from the Accession of James II (1848-59). In his essays on Lord Clive (1840) and Warren Hastings (1841) Indian affairs were addressed more directly and its people and culture were framed negatively as ‘tainted with all the vices of Oriental despotism’.
Earlier British artistic representations of imperialism in India conform to academic traditions of history painting such as Francis Hayman’s Lord Clive meeting with Mir Jafar after the Battle of Plassey (c.1762) and Edward Armitage’s The Battle of Meanee (1847). The ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’ (1756) was the first occasion when atrocities against British forces might have been represented, however only with the dominance of historical genre painting (focusing on anecdotal subjects of human interest instead of the actions of ‘great men’ of history) as a visual mode in the Victorian art market did the right conditions for accessible and sensational depictions of imperial crisis occur. The ‘Indian Mutiny’ (1857) happened at the perfect moment for these developments to be manifested in artistic form.
Alternative strategies were adopted by artists like Edward Armitage, who provided allegorical responses to the Mutiny in Retribution (1858), and Henry Nelson O'Neil, who painted genre accounts of the departure and return of troops in Eastward Ho! (1857) and Home Again (1858). Both artists, however, bypassed the thorny issue of reporting the events of Cawnpore. Sir Joseph Noel Paton’s In Memoriam (1858) was different. In its original version it showed sepoys bursting in with murderous intent for the ‘innocent’ British women and children at Cawnpore. Its sensational reception at the Royal Academy led Paton to repaint the sepoys with rescuing highlanders.
Not only did Paton try to create a new vision of instability and challenge visual conventions for the representation of imperial relations, but the alteration of the work in reaction to popular outcry demonstrates an important occasion when the British public articulated its attitudes towards India. Displayed at the International Exhibitions of Paris (1867) and Glasgow (1888) this work also contributed to growing debates about British India amongst foreign nations like France and Russia. In triggering art critical debate Paton’s In Memoriam was a central device in marshalling public opinion – not only about empire, but also art.
