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Delhi Art Exhibition Explores foreigner’s View of India in the18th Century

The DAG will host the first-ever exhibition of Baltazard Solvyns’ complete series of 288 etchings known as Les Hindoûs — the artist’s second, larger edition, which was produced in Paris between 1808 and 1812.

This four-volume series, which is currently hard to come by, is a record of the people and material culture that Solvyns met during his decade in Bengal in the 1790s. The show is complemented by a book that describes, displays, and contextualizes this body of work. It is curated by Dr. Giles Tillotson, senior vice-president, exhibitions and publishing at DAG.

The exhibit will debut on July 31 and run until August 20 at the Bikaner House in New Delhi.

The exhibition is a foreigner’s vision of India’s history – or at least a portion of it in the eighteenth century – a collection of work that concentrates on Bengal and neighboring regions, where the artist lived and worked for more than a decade beginning in 1791.

Every person and item is examined closely, with an inquiring and informed eye, and shown, sometimes with wit, sometimes with a melancholy grandeur.

Solvyns, who was born and raised in Antwerp, traveled to India in the hopes of making his fortune. He stayed on the outskirts of European society, engaging more with all areas of Indian life that teemed around him while living in Calcutta without permission from the East India Company’s board of directors. He began an ambitious attempt to compile a detailed study of ‘the manners, customs, and clothing of the Hindus’ while working odd jobs. Calcutta (Kolkata) released the first edition between 1796 and 1799, with 250 hand-colored etchings. Solvyns returned to Europe after his venture did not find commercially successful.

Photo Credit: https://indianexpress.com/photos/lifestyle-gallery/art-exhibition-1790s-bengal-calcutta-indians-life-rare-etchings-7407884/lite/

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