The College of Arts and Sciences

British India Art

May 16, 2011

Article by: Rob Enslin

Assistant Professor of Art and Music Histories Romita Ray exemplifies the institutional vision of learning without borders. Thanks to support from three major awards—a 2009 summer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a visiting fellowship at the Yale Center for British Art, and a grant from London's Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art—she spent the 2009-10 academic year in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States, soaking up the art and architecture of British India for a forthcoming book on the art of the “picturesque.” The picturesque was an aesthetic ideal that permeated gardens and landscape painting in Britain during the late 18th century, spilling over to British colonies.

Ray is among a handful of scholars in the world who studies the picturesque in British India. One of the highlights of her research, she says, was being granted access to the former British governor general's country retreat in Barrackpore, a colonial town in eastern India. “The retreat was laid out along the Hooghly River in the early 1800s and has been rarely examined by scholars,” recalls Ray, noting the gardens' picturesque style. “I was lucky to be there.”  

“I am fascinated by the process by which Indian beauty became colonized in British painting, sculpture, and architecture,” Ray says.  She recently served as guest curator of an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of London.  “The show was successful because of the diverse cultures it represented and its pertinence to the global, multi-cultural environment we live in today,” she says.