Indian Portraits: The Face Of A People

Gallery Exhibition

Indian Portraits

The Face Of A People

Mumbai: Kala Ghoda, 29 March – 15 July 2014

New Delhi: Hauz Khas Village, 1 September – 26 October 2013

A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography, a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, in order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer

The exhibition Indian Portraits: The Face of a People features 118 artists and eight different anonymous schools, offering a historical perspective on the art of portraiture in India and how it has changed over the centuries. Following similar projects on landscape art, Indian Landscapes: The Changing Horizon, and nudes, The Naked and the Nude: The Body in Indian Modern Art, the third exhibition in the series focuses on portraiture in the subcontinent. While we knew that the tradition of portraiture would allow the gallery the opportunity to mine the very rich history of its practice, the wealth of the DAG archives became a crucial accommodating crux in the search.

The exhibition brings together anonymous artworks produced by the different early modern schools including lithograph prints from Bengal, artists who followed the Raja Ravi Varma form of painting, studio photographs and even portraits of royal personages by unnamed painters. Moving to artists from recent memory, the exhibition features the likes of Bikash Bhattacharjee, Chittaprosad, George Keyt, Jamini Roy and other eminent personalities credited with developing modern art in India.

Complementing the exhibition of paintings, DAG has published a 517-page publication that delves into the historicity of portrait making within the country, tracing the historical development of the art from the early British colonial era to the modern period.

Artists

Alagiri Naidu

Alphonso Doss

Ambika Dhurandhar

Anjolie Ela Menon

Anonymous (Bengal Lithographs)

Anonymous (Ladies and Gentlemen)

Anonymous (Painted Photographs)

Anonymous (Parsi Eminences)

Anonymous (Ravi Varma School)

Anonymous (Royal Personages)

Anonymous (Spiritual)

Anonymous (Studio Photographs)

Ardeshir Duishajee Tavaria

Asit Kumar Haldar

B. Paul

Baburao Sadwelkar

Badri Narayan

Benjamin Hudson

Bhunath Mukherjee

C. N. Kistnasawmy Naidu

Cecil Burns

D. L. N. Reddy

Fatima Ahmed

Frank Brooks

G. Kamble

G. N. Jadhav

G. R. Santosh

Gaganendranath Tagore

Gopal Deuskar

H. Hormusji Deboo

Hiranmoy Roychaudhuri

J. A. Lalkaka

J. Barton

J. D. Dalvi

J. D. Gondhalekar

J. P. Gangooly

J. P. Gonsalves

Jacob Epstein

K. Lall

Keshavrao Sadashiv

Koulji Ardeshir Tachakra

Lalit Mohan Sen

M. F. Pithawalla

M. R. Acharaker

Nirode Mazumdar

Olinto Ghilardi

Prahlad Chandra Karmakar

Pradip Maitra

Prokash Karmakar

R. D. Panvalkar

R. S. Bisht

Rabin Mondal

Rabindranath Tagore

Raja Ravi Varma

Rama Lal

Ramendranath Chakravorty

S. A. Meerza

Savi Savarkar

Sudhir Ranjan Khastgir

Sunil Kumar Paul

Sunqua

Tarak Garai

V. M. Oke

Vivan Sundaram

Wasim Kapoor

‘Apart from a simple record of outward appearance, conventionally one also expects an impressive portrait to be a painting of character, therefore a representation of personality’

– Sanjoy K. Mallik