If the mausoleum of Emperor Jehangir's Hindu wife was completed some time in the early 17th century, it had been rendered a ruin by the end of the 18th, when the Daniell uncle-and-nephew team of landscape artists from England arrived near Allahabad to paint its desecrated state. Emperor Akbar's mausoleum at Sikandra, Agra, had suffered similar ignominy, all four slender minarets of its gateway broken by vandals, or lightning. Though they were by no stretch of imagination illustrators of carrion or decay, the Daniells were drawn to the picturesque and the exotic, and on both counts India more than lived up to its promise. Their ode to the country was more intense than that of William Hodges, Tilly Kettle, John Zoffany, George Chinnery, Olinto Ghilardi or Joshua Reynolds, and two centuries after they set foot here, their panoramas of India remain the finest examples of Indian landscape art in India or Europe.
William Daniell was 36, his nephew Thomas 16, when they sought the permission of the "Honourable Court of the Directors of the East India Company" to sail to India in 1786, thereafter to spend eight years travelling extensively to paint plein-air views - or sceneries - in the romantic tradition that was their forte. Their first port of call was Calcutta, "not only the handsomest town in Asia but one of the finest in the world", twelve views of which were selected after extensive time spent painting images of Government House, the Esplanade and other official monuments for publication at a cost of 12 gold mohurs, as advertised in the Calcutta Chronicle. With enough money earned from the commission, the Daniells, accompanied by "two attendants of Eurasian origin; a sircar who was to be their broker and house steward; a khidmatgar or table servant; a chaukidar - watchman; and two khalasis who would pitch tents for them whenever they left their boat, which was to be their home on the river, to go on to land," writes art-historian B N Goswamy in a succinct introduction. "There was excitement in the trip but dangers lurked everywhere: stormy currents, slippery climbs, highwaymen, wrong turns."
Their itinerary, already exhaustive, was made extraordinary on account of their drawings of "abandoned palaces, unkempt structures, ruins of old monuments now all but lost amid shrubbery, mouldering tombs, roaring waterfalls, placid lakes, forts perilously placed atop dizzying heights", which, rendered into aquatints, gained them enough wealth to travel south. This time they were accompanied by a more extensive retinue of "two palanquins each with bearers, two horses and grooms, a bullock cart and three pack-bullocks, seven bearers to carry provisions, two porters to carry their drawing tables, besides several personal servants".
The few canvases in which the Daniells have painted themselves in, offer a glimpse of their working style - the use of drawing boards before which they sat on stools, of telescopes to study details of, presumably, distant architecture, and the use of the camera obscura which helped in the "upside down" reproduction of images that were required to be traced. "Quite naturally the India that the Daniells saw was different from ours," Goswamy notes, but it was an India that was majestic too, thanks to the large swathes of sky the artists used to lend an element of grandness to their "select views". And though they might well have "subscribed to the view that the British held of their role in these parts", there was also a sense of empathy - no small feat considering everything they encountered, from the land to its customs, clothes and food, was so different from their own.
While an air of languor is evident in the pose or movement of the natives, there are also excellent examples of the use of palanquins, for instance, or of royal barges navigating the Ganga in Banaras, or the Killadar (governor of the fort) "with his usual attendants" at "Jumma Musjed" in Delhi, that provided a social commentary within the larger ambit of landscape art. If at all they faltered, it was on the few occasions they depicted too closely temples teeming with sculptures of gods - as in Madurai - that must have appeared to them alien, and which, one cannot help think, tested their abilities. Yet, decorative motifs afforded them no problem.
Daniells' India adds no new research on the artists, but locates for the first time a selection of 94 aquatints from the National Archives of India in a handsome volume, colour-corrected and reproduced in a manner that would have been impossible in the 18th century, even for engravings made in London for the purpose of reproduction, and which would have delighted the Daniells. In India, their task of making engravings they considered unsatisfactory had proved so exhausting, Thomas Daniell had exclaimed, "The fatigue I have experienced…has almost worn me out."
Four such volumes of Twenty-four Landscapes, Views in Hindoostan forms the basis for the Archives' "programme to reprint rare and historical publications", observes director general Mushirul Hassan in his preface. "Ours is a major initiative to make records, manuscripts and paintings accessible to the public at large," he writes. "We want an Open Archives in order to share our treasures with others. We don't want them to be kept under lock and key."
An excellent beginning has been made with Daniells' India - now if only someone would take up the onerous task of identifying "Koah Nullah", "Chevalpettore", "Dhuah Koonde", "Siccr Gulley on the Ganges" and "Coaduwar Gaut", no reference for which has been provided, alas, by either the Archives or the book's editors.
DANIELLS' INDIA VIEWS FROM THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Introduction by: B N Goswami
Publisher: Niyogi Books
Pages: 204
Price: Rs 6,000
