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Solvyns’ intimate portrait of Calcutta
Live MintIn July 1790, Baltazard Solvyns, a young marine painter, embarked on a voyage to India to escape political unrest in northern Europe and make his fortune. As he worked odd jobs, Solvyns embarked on a project, of sorts, to capture the mannerisms, costumes and Hindu society of Calcutta,” says Giles Tillotson, senior vice-president, exhibitions and publications, at DAG. “Though he does not say as much, he perhaps intended her to represent the Indo-Portuguese community,” notes Tillotson in the book that accompanies the exhibition and contextualises Solvyns’ work. Tillotson notes, “As his book’s title frankly declares, his focus is on the Hindus, who—despite internal distinctions and hierarchies—seem in his account of them to inhabit a homogeneous world, very little touched by people of other faiths or nationality.” The reason, he says, could be that Solvyns seems to have got most of his information about Hindu society from Bengali Brahmins. It seems like a copy of an Indian miniature featuring Alivardi Khan, the former nawab of Bengal, who ruled in the mid-18th century, before Solvyns came to Calcutta,” says Tillotson.
History of this topic
Baltazard Solvyns cast his artistic gaze on the ordinary people of Bengal
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