FROM the Medicis to the Maharajas, art has always been collected and commissioned. The rationales range from patronage, aesthetic appeal, emotional dividend and sheer joy, to social status, decoration and financial investment. In the past enlightened individuals with great passion, understanding and scholarship collected great works of art that belonged to an era or a generation. The vision and commitment of many such individuals still stands tall after decades and even centuries. What would the world be like if such individuals did not support and nurture the art being created around them ? Would we ever know of the talent that existed or have a mirror to understand the society of the time ?

As we live in a rapidly changing art world of glitzy auctions, international art fairs, media hype and brand name superstar artists, ‘collecting’ has rapidly been diluted through formulaic and predictable acquisitions, lacking the necessary spontaneity that was part of the charm of collecting.

Of late, collecting because of purely financial consideration has worsened the already deteriorating situation. Art today is about the moment, the fashion, an exhibition akin to a latest fall or spring collection on the ramp! Reputations are built and destroyed instantly and what was once, just till yesterday, considered avant-garde is banal today. In India, the situation is particularly worse. With no active museum culture and a government that sees everything over a century old with suspicion, collecting for passion has become increasing challenging. In this essay, I salute some of the people who have stood out over the centuries and have collected art, not for fashion but passion.

The birth of collecting can probably be traced to the beginning of the Mughal empire. Humayun was exiled from India to Persia in 1540. In the fifteen years he spent between Persia and Afghanistan, he came in touch with artists Aga Mirak, Sultan Muhammad and Muzaffer Ali, the pupils of the legendary artist Bihzad, also known as Raphael of the East. Both Humayun and his son Akbar took lessons from master artists such as Mir Sayyid Ali and Abdus Samed in 1550. When Humayun regained his throne in Delhi, these artists accompanied him back to India.

Emperor Akbar, who is known as the real founder of Mughal painting, amassed a variety of artists including architects, poets, musicians and also painters and calligraphers. Abul Fazal’s accounts tell us that works of painting were shown to Akbar weekly and he gave rewards to fine artists according to the excellence of their workmanship. It was during this time that fine bodies of work such as the Hamzanama were commissioned.

Mughal patronage continued through to the next generations under the reign of Jehangir who, together with his wife Noor Jehan, was not only interested in painting but had a tremendously fine eye, that of a true connoisseur. In the days when Mughal paintings were made in Royal ateliers and several artists worked on a single painting, Jehangir said, ‘My liking for painting and my practice in judging it have arrived at such a point that when any work is brought before me, either of a deceased artist or of those of the present day, without names being told to me, I say on the spot of the moment that this is the work of such and such artist. And if there is a picture containing many portraits, and each face is the work of a different master, I can discover which face is the work of each of them.’ The statement shows not only the deep understanding the monarch had for painting, but also the attention to detail he was able to muster with respect to a painting.

 

Things were very different by the time Aurangzeb ruled. His religious intolerance ensured that there was no place where art and culture could flourish. He destroyed temples all over India and mural paintings showing Christian themes at Akbar’s tomb in Sikandra were whitewashed. In Bijapur, in the Deccan, he defaced the pictures at the Ajar Mahal. This long period of decline was arrested by Bahadur Shah in 1707 who once again restored court patronage, albeit very briefly. Even over a century after the Mughal’s began to rule in India, painting remained vastly important. It was under Bahadur Shah’s reign that the magnificent Shahjehan Nama was painted for him, now in the collection of Queen Elizabeth II.

Nadir Shah invaded Delhi in 1738, and took with him fine paintings, together with the peacock throne, leaving an empire in shambles. The spoils were fought over by the Afghans, Marathas, Sikhs, Jats and rebellious governors. Painting in Delhi received a serious blow and an exodus of artists took to Lucknow, Patna, Hyderabad and the Punjab hills and Rajasthan.

As the history of Indian artists passed to the provincial courts, some grand and other small fortresses, the output of each hill state was exceptional when the ruler understood, loved and supported its painters. The states of Bundi, Kota, Bikaner, Mewar, Chamba, Kangra, Kullu, Kishangarh at different times had passionate kings such as Kirpal Pal of Basholi, Govardhan Chand of Guler and Sansar Chand of Kangra, the most generous patron of art under whose patronage some of the finest Indian art has been produced. The artists who came mainly from Mughal courts to these hill states were quickly assimilated and schools with peculiar styles developed under the patronage of their masters. In 17th and 18th century India, these kings nurtured art that was arguably the best expressions of creativity the world has ever seen. The stunning bold compositions, with their distinct character and compositions, continue to amaze us to this day.

 

Post the court of Ranjit Singh in Lahore, painting found little patronage under British rule. Even though generals, lords, commanders and other officers continued to amass Indian art and craft and take it back to England, commissioning and collecting art ceased to be a priority for a country struggling to deal with colonial rule. Prime patrons were influenced by their colonial masters. Art for them meant buying foreign luxury branded goods, motor cars and having their precious gems set by jewellers in France. Needless to say, they collected these with tremendous passion even though the fashion was now to collect from abroad.

British rule forced a western academic instruction in government art schools from the 1850s onwards and the Indian elite practically began to worship Victorian naturalism. During this time they lost the appreciation and understanding of the aesthetics of their own tradition.

Indian maharajas such as Holkar of Indore commissioned avant-grade artist Brancusi to create sculpture for him. Others like the Gaekwad’s of Baroda created fine museums, amassing all sorts of curiosities and fine art from the world over. Other royals were content having their portraits painted by Raja Ravi Verma.

The early part of the 20th century was to change all of that. Abanindranath Tagore, whose family was deeply involved in the creation of a new Indian aesthetic was a pioneering collector of Indian miniature paintings of the Kangra and Mughal style. It was through Tagore that Ananda Coomaraswamy, the renowned historian of Indian art, gained an exposure to Indian miniatures. It was after his stay at the Tagore family mansion in 1909 in Calcutta that Coomaraswamy acquired a new understanding of this aspect of Indian art and decided to ‘passionately’ put together an even larger collection of his own.

 

Coomaraswamy organized an exhibition of Indian paintings in Allahabad which inspired Rai Krismadasa, a brilliant India painting connoisseur for the Bharatiya Lalit Kala Parishad, now known as Bharat Kala Bhawan in Varanasi. Krishnadas influenced a small but growing circle of Indian collectors, namely P.C. Manuk, a high court judge in Patna, N.C. Mehta, an officer of the Indian Civil Service and Gopi Krishan Kanoria, a businessman, who lived between Patna and Calcutta. These individuals were not only responsible for enhancing the growing scholarship of Indian painting but helped the collections of the National Museum, Delhi and the Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai.

In post independence Mumbai, the Parsi community that dominated the city’s commercial and cultural elite, was following in the footsteps of Rai Krishnandas. Karl Khandalawala, a leading barrister, Ardeisher C. Ardeshir, F.D. Wadia and Sir Cowasji Jehangir were the most distinguished collectors through the period 1935-1960 and even later. Calcutta businessman Jagdish P. Goenka and B.K. Birla also made stupendous collections of Indian painting as did Kumar Sangram Singh of Nawalgarh, Jagdish Mittal and Colonel Raj Kumar Tandon in Hyderabad.

The passing of the Antiquities Act in 1973 gave a blow to collecting older works and modern and contemporary art gained prominence thereafter. In Delhi, collectors such as Ebrahim Alkazi had begun collecting seminal works of the Progressives, namely Souza, Husain, Raza, Padamsee and Tyeb Mehta as early as the 1950s. In Mumbai, collectors such as Jehangir Nicholson began to collect passionately to fill a vacuum in his life after the death of his wife in the 1960s. Harsh Goenka, the nephew of J.P. Goenka, also collected the Moderns and continued the family tradition.

 

In the 1980s and 1990s collecting art was just about becoming fashionable even though collectors such as Czaee Shah and Devender and Kanwaldeep Sahwney bought very selectively, either focusing on a particular artist or buying cutting edge younger artists like Atul Dodiya and Jitish Kallat from their first solo exhibitions. Another collector of great importance who has sadly been forgotten as the collection was disposed off for no particular reason by her family after her premature demise, was Nandita Judge.

In this century of Indian art going global and Indian artists being shown by some of the best western galleries, Anupam Poddar is credited with collecting Subodh Gupta and his wife Bharti Kher, amongst others, very early on in their careers. Not only has he, along with his mother Lekha, collected some of the most important works by these artists, they have also established the now well known Devi Art Foundation which shows their ever expanding avant-garde connection to the public.

 

In a country like India, where the museums do not disseminate knowledge; where the government does not see art as a priority and where the press considers art only as an investment, collecting has been reduced to a ‘fashion’ of big, bright paintings by contemporary artists with an increasing scale of wall space becoming available! With the hectic pace of new wealth being created, art is, at the moment, just another status symbol. Hyped auctions, global art fairs, champagne vernissages and rapidly escalating prices have tainted our vision, which is getting swept away by the ‘hot artist’ of the season.

The last couple of decades have seen the Indian economy go through a rapid transformation. Deregulation across industry and disciplines has ushered in revolutions in information technology, telecom, real estate and now, infrastructure. With imagery transcending borders seamlessly, global media penetration, increased travel in this rapidly growing service economy, coupled with the internet revolution, India’s increased self- confidence and integration into the global economy has had its impact on the art world as well.

In these decades, Indian contemporary art has seen a huge explosion of interest the world over, with numerous museum shows at the Tate, Whitechapel and Serpentine Gallery, London; Asia Society, New York; Riena Sofia, Madrid; Art Institute of Chicago, Kunst Museum, Bern, and the Mori Museum in Japan to name a few. Needless to say, this has interested a variety of collectors ranging from the Indian diaspora the world over, to prominent names in the global art world such Frank Cohen and Charles Saatchi. But is this exposure about real content or a fashionable, politically correct statement that these museums want to make? Is Indian art the next big temporary flash in the pan after the Saatchi’s of the world have finished with collecting and showing off the art of Eastern Europe and China?

 

Back home, things are slightly different but art dealing and collecting has a lot to do fashion. As new money chases the old established names at a rapid pace, people with increasingly less knowledge and time are pouring money into this next big status symbol. Taking refuge in movements such as the Progressives or Young Baroda, the collectors of today are chasing artists that make and break records at auctions. The ever changing price/quality equation is now dictated by auction houses and its participants. While designers decorate newly built homes to colour coordinate paintings with the fabrics, astute businessmen punt on the increasingly rare and older works of established artists and rising stars alike, in an effort to communicate their newly acquired wealth that can now signal lineage and intellectual capacity.

Needless to say the number of real passionate collectors are becoming a thing of the past, a species that seems to be going virtually extinct. Even though the newer participants might have entered the art world to make a fashion statement, the sheer power of art will hopefully convert many of them into the passionate collectors and commissioners we have been fortunate to have in our country in the centuries gone by.