Reverse Glass Painting In India
Paper Type: 150 gsm Art paper (matt) | Size: 228 mm x 228 mm
All colour; 361 colour and 49 black and white photographs; 252 pages; Hardback
ISBN-10: 9385285343 | ISBN-13: 978-93-85285-34-9
1495 | 30 | 24
Reverse Glass Painting is a fascinating yet comparatively unknown
facet of Indian art that flourished in the mid-19th century. Created by Chinese
and Indian artists, these ‘exotic’ paintings in luminous colours were much
favoured by royal patrons, and also by prosperous landowners and city merchants
in colonial India. The themes ranged from portraits of rulers, their families,
nobles, dancers and courtesans, to landscapes and a wide variety of religious
subjects drawn from the Puranas and
the Epics. Many of the portraits depict western style settings and offer a
charming insight into the tastes and lifestyle of the western-educated urban
elite in mid-19th and early 20th century India. Over 100 colour images
highlight the rare gems of reverse glass painting from numerous private
collections in India.
Anna L. Dallapiccola
Author
Professor Anna L. Dallapiccola has a Ph.D in Indian Art History and a Habilitation
(D.Litt.) from University of Heidelberg, Germany. She was Professor of Indian
Art at the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University from 1971 to 1995 and
then appointed as Honorary Professor at Edinburgh University in 1991. She
lectures at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. From 2000 to
2004 she was Visiting Professor at De Montfort University Leicester. Among her
latest publications are Catalogue of South Indian Paintings in the Collection of the British Museum (2010), The Great Platform at Vijayanagara (2010), Indian Painting: The Lesser Known Traditions (2011)
and Kalamkari Temple Hangings, a study
of the collection in the V&A (2015). She has at present two concurrent
research programmes in India, the first on the art of the Vijayanagara
successor states and the second on the Virabhadra temple at Lepakshi.