Capturing the colonial gaze | DAG's 'The Indian Picturesque'
The Indian Picturesque, an exhibition at DAG Delhi, delves into the politics of landscape art
by Aditya Mani Jha · India TodayISSUE DATE: May 4, 2026
A common starter task for schoolchildren in India is to draw a ‘scenery’. The morning sun peeking from behind a mountain-top, a stream gushing down, a few man-made structures. The tradition this borrows from is the English ‘picturesque’, the foundational influence of which is visible in English landscape paintings of the 18th and 19th centuries. The aesthetics and the politics of the picturesque are the focus of an exhibition at Delhi’s DAG—The Indian Picturesque: Landscape Painting 1800-1850. Curated by Giles Tillotson, it brings together British and Indian landscape paintings from the first half of the 19th century.
Viewed side by side, these paintings show a wide array of artistic and sociological connections, an artistic dialogue between the English and the Indian. They also betray the ideological project that lay at the heart of the picturesque. For instance, many paintings here show buildings in ruins—like ‘Front View of the Ruined Mosque, the Jumah Musjid’ (1852) by Claudius Richard William Harris or ‘Remains of an Ancient Building near Firoz Shah’s Cotilla’, Delhi (1850) by an unnamed artist. As Tillotson explains in the exhibition book, drawing abandoned, hollowed-out buildings showcased the empire’s control and dominion over the land.
Among the Indian artists on display is Sita Ram, a major artist of the Company School. His ‘Rumi Darwaza and Entrance to the Imambara at Lucknow’ (1815-25) is an example of an Indian artist blending English landscape methods with Indian techniques. The Indian Picturesque is highly recommended for art and history buffs.
—The exhibition is on view till May 2
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