Karmic Calcutta

IF ONE WERE TO do a rudimentary online search of 18th-century paintings from India one would en­counter a range of seated noblemen, hunting princes, gods and goddesses, monuments, landscapes, and the occasional bird or animal. Mundane life and laypeople are missing. In the art of that time, the man (seldom, if ever, woman) on the street was not deemed a worthy subject. Netherlander artist, (often classified as Flemish) Francois Baltazard Solvyns (1760-1824), born in Antwerp, however cast his gaze and brush on the people he saw in Bengal. He made 288 etchings titled Les Hindoûs, focused on different professions (from musicians to cowherds to potters to grocers to cobblers to toddy tappers), different modes of transport (all varieties of palanquins and boats), festivals and ceremonies, and glimpses of rural and urban life. Now one can view a selection of Solvyns’ art in Mumbai for the first time, thanks to DAG, in collaboration with Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum (BLD). People of Bengal: Coloured Etchings by F Baltazard Solvyns, syncs with DAG’s vision to bring the work of foreign artists who practised in India in the preceding centuries to India. Solvyns’ works at the Mumbai museum are drawn from his Indian etchings during his time in Bengal in the 1790s. He would make four volumes of works. He published the first edition of Les Hindoûs in Calcutta in 1796-99. The second, enlarged edition (on which the exhibi­tion is based) was published in Paris between 1808 and 1812.

Curated by Giles Tillotson, Senior Vice President, Exhibitions, DAG, the exhibition is accompanied by a book, The Hindus: Baltazard Solvyns in Bengal. Solvyns stands out from other European artists in India at that time because he chose to explore the back lanes of Calcutta. Most other European art­ists sought out patronage and wealth by painting portraits of royal families or East India officials, and they chose to depict India’s monuments, such as the Taj Mahal or Akbar’s Tomb, or the scenery. (Solvyns, on the other hand, has only one scenery out of 288 plates.) As Tillotson says, on a Zoom call from Delhi, “Baltazard Solvyns is the first person to be interested in the lower rungs of Indian society from a Western perspective. He originates this ethnographic approach to Indian society. If you think of, as it were, real Indian painting of that period, we’re mostly talking about court painting, and it focuses very little on ordinary people.”

To spend time at People of Bengal is to see India through Solvyns’ eyes. As a painter and engraver, his works are docu­ments of the colonial period as he sees firsthand all the people and traditions he immortalises. He gets many things right about the country, but he also gets some things wrong. His cityscapes transport one to the buzzing markets of Calcutta. In Nations Différentes (Different Nations) people from various countries interact with one another. From the dress, one can spot Hindus, Muslims, an Armenian, a Chinese and a Malay. This work tells us of Calcutta’s cosmopolitan nature in the 1790s. Most interesting is that Solvyns includes himself in this capriccio (a work that juxtaposes different subjects to­gether). He can be seen in profile talking to a woman with an uncovered head who is perhaps Indo-Portuguese. By includ­ing himself in the painting, Solvyns situates himself within Calcutta’s multicultural crowd, when in reality he was very much at the fringes.

SOLVYNS WAS TRAINED as a marine painter and wishing to escape the turmoil of Antwerp and north­ern Europe, he came to India on a ship that was involved in illegal trading, as it bypassed the East India Company’s monopoly. He had not obtained the required permissions from the Company to stay in India. As Tillotson writes in the book, “Solvyns’s status as an unlicensed resident did limit the extent to which he was accepted into European society in the city.” He had to make do with the busier and crowded Tank Square when most of his fellow countrymen were basking in the more luxurious lanes of Chowringhee. Alienated from the European world, he interacted more closely with the locals. This twist of circumstance ensured his posterity as he pro­duced art that stood out from his contemporaries.

Tillotson adds, “His being on the fringes of society as far as the Europeans in Calcutta are concerned is both an advan­tage and a disadvantage. It’s an advantage in the sense that he’s immersed very much more in Indian life, much more than your average European would be in this period, but a disadvantage in the sense he’s got no ability to stand outside and to think critically.”

The advantages of Solvyns’ immersion are obvious at BLD. We get to see the Bannean (Bania) (he transliterated Bengali into French) seated on a chair beside a table that has an ink pot and a quill. He handles the business of the household, writes Solvyns. The Khitmetgar (Khidmatgar) stands in the centre of the frame, near him (but invisible to us) we see the outline of a seated gentleman. Which tells us that the Khidmatgar was the shadow of the master, out of sight, but always near at hand. There is a poignant portrait is of the Behichty (Bhisti) or water carrier, who would carry water in a leather bag. He would wet the soil to cool it down. Bhisti’s back is turned to us, but we can tell that he is working outside a fortified house, complete with high fences. Tillotson says that the absence of the Bishti’s face “suggests here is a man who comes and goes almost unseen.”

Solvyns’ series on palanquins transport us to a world where the hand-pulled chariot denoted one’s station. The Mejana (miyana) is a simple palanquin that is parked outside a haweli that seems to have fallen on difficult times. The Chaise Palanquin (Chair Palki) introduced by the Europeans, is comparatively luxurious, with its shutters, and it stands in front of a mansion. Through his astute choice of setting and placement, Solvyns gives us a quick ethnographic tour. Highlighting the palki section, Tillotson says, “You’ve got all these lovely pictures of carriages, it’s not as if nobody had done them before. But in those paintings it will just be somebody with a palanquin. They are just tiny details made to animate the foreground of the picture. Solvyns, on the other hand, goes in up close, as if he wants just that single aspect of the culture.”

While Solvyns does a fine job of chronicling all that he sees and all those he meets, he also blunders along the way. For example, he identifies a certain seated royal figure as the Raja of Thanjavur. As Tillotson explains, this is an error as there is no chance Solvyns crossed paths with the Thanjavur monarch in Calcutta. He gets his information wrong, as he possibly relied too heavily on hearsay and did not have access to places of learning or meetings of the Asiatic Society, because of his marginal status. Tillotson points out that the royal figure is not Serfoji II, Raja of Thanjavur; rather it is Ali Vardi Khan, the former Nawab of Bengal.

If Solvyns got names and facts wrong, his etchings were also not celebrated in their time, as they were seen as rather crude and amateurish. The value of his work is not in the ‘beauty’ of his portraits, but in their storytelling. His figures do look rather melancholic, and this is, perhaps, because of their deep-seated and droopy eyes with their distant gaze. As Ashish Anand, CEO and Managing Director, DAG, writes in the Foreword of the book, “Solvyns may not always seek to please, but his searching gaze will certainly intrigue us, and may make us look afresh at things we thought we knew only too well.”

Solvyns’ searching gaze gives us scenes from the past, such as public readings of the Mahabharata and Ramayana, where a brahmin would sit on stage and deliver a lecture to listeners who sat huddled on their haunches in front. The absence of women in the entire series is stark, but in these public events we notice a few women with covered heads listening in rapt attention. The Rath Yatra where the idol is taken in a carriage is also rendered with suitable pomp. Compared to today’s visarjan where women are as much part of the festivities as men, their absence here reminds us how far we’ve (thankfully) come since then.

The few women in Solvyns’ collection include the Day (Dai, Wet-Nurse), nautch dancers, resplendent in their regalia, and in contrast an Agoury (Aghori) who is clad in a simple white saree standing beneath the shade of a tree. Solvyns explains to his white audience, “This name of Agooree is given by the Hindoos to those women who prefer a life of exile and solitude in the woods and deserts.”

Two particularly stark etchings in this collection are Choho-Gomon, which depict Sati. Here we see a corpse on a pyre and a woman being led towards it. While a few onlookers cover their faces and weep, many seem to be mere onlookers of this barbaric act. The widow being led to her death appears young and unwilling, and the horror of the scene is conveyed with dexterity by Solvyns.

While Solvyns’ etchings of people might be rather heavy, as a marine artist his depictions of ships and boats are filled with light and air. From yachts to dinghies to ferries he recre­ates them all with detail and finesse. As Tillotson says, “Marine historians find his work tremendously useful because he tells us exactly what each boat was used for and where, and in which parts of the country it was used, and how each vessel is designed to carry a different kind of commodity.”

Solvyns’ etchings are the product of toil and labour. As one of the few artists who were both a painter and an engraver at that time, he would first make an etching on a plate. Once they were printed in monochrome, the watercolour was applied by hand, not with a brush, but with a cotton bud called poupée (French for ‘doll’). After printing, he would apply further colour washes by hand to finish each work.

People of Bengal throws open the curtains of how a Western artist saw India during colonial times. But it is more than that because it allows us to see the comings and goings in Calcutta. It shows the yatras of the time, where people stand with bowed heads and folded hands. We witness jugglers performing impossible stunts, and we can’t help but smile when we see the Djoltren (Jal-tarang), a musician playing bowls of different sizes with varying water levels. Even though Solvyns’ etchings were copied and plagiarised, when he was alive, he never saw any real financial gain from them. But centuries later his art has value for us for its ethnographic and narrative value. n

(People of Bengal: Coloured Etchings by F Baltazard Solvyns, a DAG exhibition, is on view at Special Project Space, Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai, till June 29)

artsBaltazard SolvynsGiles TillotsonIndian societyNations Différentespaintingswestern perspective