Untitled (Botanical Study)

As the European trading companies started settling in their commercial—and later political—affairs in India, especially from the seventeenth century onwards, they started employing artists to create a ‘directory’ of sorts of everything about the new land that they needed to know to engage with it most profitably. Botanical studies such as this one were created to list and understand the floral wealth of the subcontinent, which also served as tokens of exotica for consumption in the European drawing rooms. This watercolour presents the tropical breadfruit, and also gives an idea of its fleshy interior.