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THE Indian royalty’s fascination for exotica - it goes back a long, long time - is neatly summed up in a wonderful 18th century painting from the celebrated Binney collection, now part of the fine collections of the San Diego Museum of Art. It shows the Maharana of Mewar, Sangram Singh, seated with his children and some courtiers in the intimate surroundings of one of his many palaces at Udaipur. The Maharana, in conversation with his preceptor, the Yogi Nilkanth, and resting a little daughter in his lap, occupies some space in the painting, as do a number of ascetics in matted locks, seated in orderly fashion at the other end. But the painting belongs essentially to the Maharana’s children, for the occasion clearly is the arrival of some exotic toys - ‘firangi’ playthings, as the inscription at the back suggests - seemingly come in through the Dutch factors then active in Surat. There is excitement, and curiosity, in the air: as musicians play and others, including the wet-nurse of one of the Maharana’s children, watch, an attendant is seen walking in with a wooden box with European figures painted on the outside; other toys, boats and European equestrian figures and carved elephants, lie on the ground. Meanwhile, other delights are hinted at: a mysterious-looking, large, unopened chest, presumably packed with imported bric-abrac, fills one corner of the palace; blue and white Dutch tiles fill a niche in the wall in the very centre of the painting. Provided one moves through it at a leisured pace, there is much to take in, in the work, As there was, I discovered, in an exhibition on Dutch tiles - much of the kind seen in that painting - that was currently on, also at the San Diego Museum of Art. In many ways, the show was a low-key affair, compared with some of the large, high-profile exhibitions that the Museum hosts or mounts from time to time. Everything in it came from the Museum’s own collection; it filled just one large gallery; and its scope was limited to showing, barring some well-chosen and relevant engravings, only tiles made in the seventeenth century in Holland. But somehow the show drew you to itself, partly on account of its very clear focus, and in part because it led you, through the thoughtfully written text or ‘didactics’ that accompanied it, into the by-lanes of the world of craft and commerce and culture of which these ceramic tiles were a product. Once inside the gallery, one had the opportunity to learn a great deal, and to take in a whole range of engaging objects. On my own part, till I went into the show, I knew woefully little about the history of Dutch tiles, the only name standing out in the mind being ‘Delft’. I had no idea thus that a large-scale tile-making industry had flourished in the Spanish Netherlands as early as the 15th century, or that it was the Italian makers of majolica - the word for multi-coloured, tin-glazed pottery - who inducted the potters of the Netherlands into the secrets of tin glazing and the application of painted designs early in the 16th century. How the Persians strove to imitate the aesthetic of Chinese porcelains, how these techniques were brought to Europe by north African Muslims, or what revolutions in taste the arrival of large cargoes of Chinese porcelain caused in Europe early in the 17th century, was also little known to me. In and through the show, I acquainted myself with some of the fascinating aspects of the evolving techniques of clay-tile making and glazing, learnt how dramatically the population of Amsterdam grew within a century and a half from ten thousand to well over two hundred thousand only due to burgeoning commerce, and understood some of the reasons behind the great popularity of tiles, combining as they did economy and efficiency and elegance. Even more absorbing for me personally was the manner in which the show brought out the relationship between the ‘high art’ of print-making and the ‘craft’ of tile-manufacture. For there they were, on tiles as they were on celebrated prints, Ruisdael’s Little Bridge and de Gheyn’s Musketeer. One could see, weaving in and out, from one medium to another, images of birds and flowers, landscapes and maritime subjects, biblical scenes and famous battles. The mind was constantly engaged. And this is quite a lot to bring back from one small show. But back to India, and the maddeningly catholic Indian taste. How exactly the rulers of Mewar, especially Sangram Singh and Ari Singh, were seduced by the charmof Dutch and Chinese blue-and-white tiles, would remain unknown. But the section of the royal palace that came to bear the name Chini ri Chtrashala - literally, the ‘Gallery of Ceramic (or Chinese?) Images’ - and that sprang almost certainly from contacts with the Dutch embassy of 1711 led by J.J. Ketelaar, became a spot much favoured by these princes. For every now and then, in paintings, we see them there: listening to music, watching dancers, receiving visitors. |
