Company School

In the nearly 150 years of British rule, Indian indigenous art had registered quite a retardation. Whatever little remained in the name of painting was made to order for the British, catering exclusively to the British taste. A distinctive genre of paintings thus emerged early in the nineteenth century, mostly portraying Indian tradition and custom for the curious Britons back home. Otherwise these works generally contained Indian exotic flora and fauna for the natural history institutions in Britain. But the British generally accorded them the status of visual documents rather than real art, providing general discouragement to the artists.