The Weavers

Arthur William Devis

Arthur William Devis spent over a decade in India (1784–1795), documenting Bengal’s artisanal life with rare intimacy, creating twenty-six detailed studies of local trades painted between 1792 and 1795. Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1796, The Weaver—a part of this series—depicts a tanti at his loom in Santipur, a major muslin-weaving centre. Though planned as a published series, only five works, including this one, were ever engraved.