Pratidwandi (1970)

Pratidwandi (1970)
Jayshree Ray fixes her gaze on Central Calcutta in Satyajit Ray's Pratidwandi (The Adversary, 1970)

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Calcutta That Was: Paintings from 1792-1837

In the late-eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, British painters vigorously painted the new Oriental colonial possessions of their country. Thomas Daniel and others traversed the length and breadth of the land to put down on paper what they saw before their eyes. Calcutta, the headquarters of the nascent colonial empire in the east, attracted particular attention of these painters. These paintings, in their vivid details, not only lets us take a glimpse at a bygone Calcutta through their eyes, but through way certain places, people and objects that found their way into these paintings, one can also note a thing or two about how these painters thought about and looked at the cityscape.

The collection of R. Jacob Esquire features several paintings from this period. The link to the collection is here











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