Mr. Angira and Ms. Preeti showcased and explained Dakshinapatha: A Southern Odyssey through the paintings by various artist.
For the first time in India, historic art from the colonial era will be available for preview and sale at one of India’s leading galleries, Gallery Veda. This one of a kind collection of aquatints, engravings, lithographs and maps is bound to take the viewer on a journey through time and space where colonialism was just about creeping into southern India.
This is show is one chance to experience 200 carefully curated works of medieval southern India, seen exclusively through European eyes. The artistic quality of these works is of a high caliber, a tribute indeed to the illustrator’s persistence and unsurpassed skill in handling such difficult, delicate mediums.
The artists behind these paintings, illustrations, etchings, aquatints and lithographs came to India mostly as surveyors of the ™Company∫. Their efforts have bequeathed to us for posterity, images of our land as it once was. In this list are the works of the great uncle-nephew duo of Thomas and William Daniell – perhaps the best known in this group, Prince Alex Soltykoff, Henry Salt, R.H. Colebrooke, Col. Douglas Hamilton, Mather Brown, and the works of Robert Ker Porter, and many others.
The array of paintings on display include stunning panoramas of the South Indian countryside, along with astonishingly vivid portrayals of grand and ordinary life events – such as temple processions and people amidst daily chores. There are life-like images of local flora crafted in such fine detail, they unfailingly draw the observer in. In addition, there are the “history paintings” – embellished pictorial images, full of affect and symbolism, depicting battle and post war scenes in pre-Imperial India, in the style of romantic Greco-Roman paintings of the Baroque era.
Apart from these, there are unusual maps of various southern kingdoms as they existed before British and French colonialism. The piece de resistance of this historic show is a rare 16th century book depicting the flora of the Malabar Coast in two volumes with about 100 plates. Gallery Veda has even managed to get a few early books on Chalukyan architecture, South Indian bronzes, history of Travancore, and musical instruments of the time.
One of the finest collections outside of a museum, ‘Dakshinapatha’ is your chance to own a piece of history and are 100% non exportable.
Presented by Gallery Veda
Curated by AngiraArya
4/22 Rutland Gate (1st floor), 5th street, Nungambakkam, Chennai-6
Show dates October 11- November 25th, 2015
