In 1600, a group of businessmen pooled their resources to found the British East India Company. Originally envisioned as a trading corporation—moving cottons, fruits, opium, silks, spices, tea, and more—the Company would become an aggressive agent of British imperialism. Against this volatile backdrop of colonial expansion and exploitation, British, Indian, and Chinese artists forged new relationships and produced innovative works of art.
“Company painting” became a prevalent umbrella term for artwork made by Indian artists for patrons of the British East India Company. Drawing on the YCBA’s rich collections, this exhibition is the first to challenge and critically rethink the phrase by considering the relationships among artists trained in South Asia, Europe, and China. Encompassing hand-colored aquatints, finely rendered drawings, oil portraits, and watercolors, the exhibition highlights works by artists whose names are less familiar or no longer known alongside well-established ones.
Accompanying Publication
Edited by curators Laurel O. Peterson and Holly Shaffer, Painters, Ports, and Profits features more than one hundred objects drawn primarily from the Yale Center for British Art’s collection, including architectural drafts, burnished opaque watercolors, hand-colored aquatints, small and large-scale portraits, and a spectacular thirty-seven-foot-long scroll depicting the city of Lucknow. An international group of scholars, curators, and conservators provide rich commentary based on new research.
Related Programs
First Look | Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750–1850
January 15, 4–5 pm, Lecture Hall and Livestream
Curator Tours
Thursdays, January 22, March 26, April 16, May 21, and June 18, 4 pm
Docent Tours
Saturdays, 3 pm
Selected works
Lucknow from the Gomti (detail), Lucknow, India, between 1821 and 1826
Artist once known, Breadnut (Artocarpus camansi), ca. 1825
Bhawani Das, A Great Indian Fruit Bat or Flying Fox (Ptreopus giganteus), 1778 to 1782
Gangaram Chintaman Navgire Tambat, A Rhinoceros in the Peshwa's Menagerie at Poona, 1790
Tilly Kettle, Shuja al-Daula, Nawab of Awadh, 1772
Artist once known, Yellow-eyed Babbler (Chrysomma sinense) Perched on Chinese Hat Plant (Holmskioldia sanguinea), ca. 1770
Tilly Kettle, A Woman Holding a Hookah at Faizabad, India, 1772
Artist once known, A Marriage Procession by Night, Patna, between 1810 and 1840
Circle of Lam Qua, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1850
Top image
Lucknow from the Gomti, Lucknow, India, between 1821 and 1826, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Extended reading
