INDIA, 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY.

H. 11 CMS, 4 ¼ INS..

A delightful collection of thirty-six plaster figures of officials, religious figures, tradesmen, servants and mendicants, each individually modelled and painted by hand.

These expertly modelled and painted figures provide a snapshot of different levels of Indian society during the late nineteenth century. Such figures are fragile and do not normally survive in such numbers or in such an excellent condition. They were usually made of plaster and some were later embellished with cloth garments and with hair. They were mostly produced by local craftsmen in Krishnanagar near Calcutta, Lucknow and Poona as souvenirs for European visitors to the country. Their secondary purpose appears to have been to help westerners make sense of the bewildering complexity of Indian society.

For a related group in the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, see cat. no. 365 in Bayly, C.A. (general editor), The Raj: India and the British 1600-1947. London: National Portrait Gallery, 1990.

Provenance: English private collection.