Destination India

Gallery Exhibition

Destination India

Foreign Artists in India 1857–1947

Mumbai: 26th April – 5th July 2025
The Taj Mahal Palace, Apollo Bunder, Mumbai
Monday – Saturday, 11:00 am to 7:00 pm

New Delhi: 13th July – 24th August 2024
22A, Janpath Road, Windsor Place, New Delhi
10:30 am – 7:00 pm

This exhibition looks at the work of foreign artists who visited India between the Uprising (1857) and Independence (1947) as examples of a late phase of Orientalist art. The famous landscape painters of a much earlier era, such as William Hodges and Thomas and William Daniell, had clearly defined goals: they came in search of picturesque views of architecture and landscape. The artists who came later, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, were more diverse in every way. They were more interested in people and society, and scenes of everyday life, than in monuments. They were stylistically varied; and they came from many countries including Germany, Holland, Denmark, France and even Japan, besides Britain.

They brought to India a fresh aesthetic sensibility. Earlier artists had come with the purpose of opening Europe’s eyes to India’s historic cultures. For Hodges and the Daniells even the Taj Mahal was relatively unknown, as no one had previously depicted it. By the late nineteenth century, travel and tourism had made it a cliché, and new ways of depicting it had to be found. The same goes for the ghats at Benares, and every other well-known site. To these were added new destinations, like the temples and forts of Rajasthan, and the gardens of Kashmir. In this selection of works, we encounter a host of people and places of India, as seen through the eyes of artists who were foreigners, but who were intent on a more personal and intimate engagement.

Artists

Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès

Alexander Scott

Alfred Crowdy Lovett

Alfred Edward Emslie

Arthur Blunt

Boris Georgiev

Carlton Alfred Smith

Cecil Burns

Charles D'Oyly

Charles R. Gerrard

Charles W. Bartlett

David Gould Green

Edward Lear

Edwin Lord Weeks

Erich Kips

Ernest Stephen Lumsden

Frank Dean

Frederick H.A. Parker

George Strahan

Horace Van Ruith

Hugo Vilfred Pedersen

John Gleich

John Griffiths

John Roderick Dempster MacKenzie

Lena George

Ludwig Hans Fischer

Marius Bauer

Mary Anne Blyth

Maurice Levis

Mortimer Menpes

Olinto Ghilardi

Richard Robert Drabble

Theodore Howard Somervell

Walter Crane

Willem Otto Jan Nieuwenkamp

William Carpenter

William Simpson

Woldemar Friedrich

Yoshida Hiroshi

exhibition highlights

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A perfect frame of 'The way we are'

Deccan Chronicle

2024

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How they painted India

The Morning Standard

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'Destination India' Exhibition Shines a Light on an intresting facet of Historic Art

Sunday Guardian

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DAG’s Destination India is a double dip in nostalgia

Times of India

2024

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In photos: Colonial India through the eyes of foreign artists

BBC

2024

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India through the eyes of foreigners | Eye on India

India Today

2024

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Orientalist artists romanticised Colonial-era India. Pilgrims disappeared from paintings

The Print

2024

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This stellar DAG exhibition in Delhi uncovers artworks from the forgotten archives of colonial India

Architecture Digest

2024

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A different Orient Express

Hindustan Times

2024

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Destination India: Rediscovering European Artistic Perspectives From 1847 To 1947

Outlook India

2024

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The Foreign Angle

OPEN

2024

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India Beyond Grandeur: A Look At Pre-Independence India, As Seen By Foreign Artists

Travel + Leisure

2024

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Eye on India

India Today

2024

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Eye on India 2

India Today

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From Jama Masjid to Lutyen’s Delhi, a look at how foreign artists saw the Capital

Indian Express

2024

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Out of the Shadows

Namaste India

2024

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Out of the Shadows

Namaste India

2024

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Shadows

Namaste India

2024

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India exotica in picture postcards

Deccan Herald

2024

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A country on a canvas

Financial Express

2024

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DAG hosts New Delhi show 'Destination India: Foreign Artists in India 1857 - 1947'

Gulf Today

2024

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India, by foreign artists

The Tribune

2024

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India Beyond Grandeur: A Look At Pre-Independence India, As Seen By Foreign Artists

Travel + Leisure India

2024

VIEW

Destination India

Foreign Artists in India 1857–1947

exhibition highlights

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