New Delhi, April 27 -- In 2019, writer and historian William Dalrymple curated a magnificent exhibition titled, Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company, at the Wallace Collection in London. It was the first of its kind to be held in the UK, bringing together a rich repository of art collectively known as "Company paintings". Crucially, the show focused on identifying as many of the artists as possible instead of lumping them all under "unknown", an orientalist shortcut that had been the default for years, pushing Company paintings into the realm of anthropological curiosity rather than fit subject for aesthetic and art-historical evaluation.

A Treasury of Life: Indian Company Paintings c. 1790-1835, currently on at ...