The flags of Great Britain and other Western nations fly over the Chinese port of Canton in an 1806 painting by British artist William Daniell.
The painting, “The European Factories, Canton,” depicts an assortment of boats crowding the port, which was the center of Chinese trade in the early 19th century. Foreign trading posts, called “factories,” line the water’s edge, marked by their national banners.
In his painting, “The European Factories, Canton,” William Daniell provides an idealized depiction of the bustling port. Daniell had last visited Canton 12 years prior to making the painting. He added an American flag, located between the French and Swedish flags, to the line of western national banners.
Daniell painted the scene for the director of the East India Dock Company, which built and managed port facilities for the British East India Company — the immensely powerful and ruthless trading corporation that dominated port cities and large swaths of territory in India for more than two centuries.
The painting is displayed in “Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750-1850,” an exhibition on view at the Yale Center of British Art (YCBA) that explores how the British East India Company’s global reach shaped and was shaped by the lives and work of British, Chinese, and Indian artists.
“Within this global story, there are smaller-scale stories of how artists and artists’ networks produced works of great beauty and innovation,” said Laurel O. Peterson, assistant curator of prints and drawings at the YCBA, who co-curated the show with Holly Shaffer, associate professor of the history of art and architecture at Brown University. “And this includes artists who worked within the company’s orbit.”
Daniell, who had last visited Canton 12 years prior to making the painting, presented the port just as a company official would want: a thriving commercial hub where trade occurs on placid waters and under golden skies.
But a second painting by Daniell in the exhibition provides a striking contrast to the artist’s idealized portrayal of Canton. “Madras, or Fort St. George, in the Bay of Bengal — a Squall Passing Off,” a painting he completed in 1833, depicts the port city of Madras in southern India, which the East India Company also controlled.
Daniell’s “Madras, or Fort St. George, in the Bay of Bengal — a Squall Passing Off.”
In that painting the company’s fortified administrative buildings loom in the distance under dark skies. In the foreground, a small vessel struggles in the turbulent waters. The violent surf and storm clouds suggest the vulnerability of imperial and corporate power, according to the exhibit text.
Here are five more things to know about the exhibition:
A contemporary installation in the museum’s Entrance Court sets the stage for the show.
Upon entering the museum, visitors will encounter “Take me, take me, take me … to the Palace of love,” a monumental sculpture by Rina Banerjee ’95 M.F.A. that reimagines the Taj Mahal, the famous white-marble mausoleum in Agra, India.
With her immersive sculpture, “Take me, take me, take me... to the Palace of love,” artist Rina Banerjee reimagines the Taj Mahal in translucent plastic.
In 1631, the Mughal emperor, Shah Jahan, commissioned the construction of the Taj Mahal to house the tomb of his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal. The sculpture’s title plays off the memorial’s dual roles as tomb and symbol of one person’s love for another. The braided sense of love, memory, and grief sits at the core of Banerjee’s conception of the piece, she said.
“Within us, there is fantasy,” Banerjee said. “We know it is unreal, but it is waiting for us to shape it and bring it forward. In that act, it becomes real, and in this truth lies hope.”
It is the first time the YCBA has staged the piece since acquiring it in 2023. While the installation is not technically part of “Painters, Ports, and Profits,” its subject, the Taj Mahal, fell under British control in 1803. In the exhibition there is a watercolor of the famous mausoleum made in 1818 by an artist now unknown.
In her sculpture, Banerjee recreates the Taj Mahal’s iconic façade and onion domes by stretching a hot pink plastic skin over a steel and copper frame. The piece, suspended from the ceiling with wires, seems to float a few inches above the floor.
The sculpture’s interior, which features a chandelier composed of pink foam balls, plastic beads, and other cheap goods, challenges ideas about value, pointing to a global system that produces objects to be alternately fetishized or quickly thrown away.
Visitors are invited to enter the tent-like sculpture’s interior. Inside — engulfed in the rosy glow of sunlight passing through the installation’s translucent pink skin — an antique Anglo-Indian Bombay armchair hovers above a globe set on a circular sumptuously carved wooden tabletop. A chandelier suspended above the chair drips with cheap goods, including plastic beads, pink foam balls, and fake birds.
Watch out for a flying fox.
Artist Bhawani Das used a brush made of squirrel hairs to make this painting of a fruit bat.
Several of the works in the exhibition feature wildlife that inhabited the East India Company’s dominion. A great Indian fruit bat, or flying fox, spreads its leathery wings in a painting by Bhawani Das, an artist who painted watercolors of Indian plants and animals for Mary, Lady Impey, and her husband, Sir Elijah Impey, the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Bengal.
Working between 1778 and 1782, the artist used a brush made from squirrel hairs to render the massive female bat’s furry body, whiskers, and expressive eyes, according to the label text. He painted the bat on a large sheet of European paper, allowing him to come closer to capturing the animal’s five-foot wingspan than if he had used Indian paper, which at the time came in smaller sheets, the text explains.
An entire cityscape unfurls on 37-foot scroll.
Agents of the East India Company were a constant presence in Lucknow in northern India, drawn there by the vast wealth of the city’s ruling elite. A 37-foot-long scroll on view depicts Lucknow’s cityscape — replete with splendid palaces, tombs, and mosques — as it unfolded along the Gomti River in about 1820.
The cityscape of Lucknow unfurls in a remarkable scroll. The portrait in the background, “A Woman Holding a Hookah at Faizabad, India,” was made in 1772 by English artist Tilly Kettle.
“You really see the magnificence of this city,” said Shaffer, who co-curated the exhibition.
The sprawling scene captures everyday life. Elephants bathe in the river. People wash laundry. Flocks of pigeons take flight.
Persian inscriptions on the lower border praise the city’s rulers and the powerful women of its court, but it is uncertain who the scroll was made for, Shaffer said.
Discover the work of artist Gangaram Tambat.
The YCBA’s collection includes more than 80 drawings by Gangaram Tambat, an artist from Poona on the Deccan Plateau in western India. Gangaram collaborated with British and Indian artists to document life in the region.
“To have so much work by a popular artist working in the period is really quite remarkable,” Shaffer said. “We can really get a sense of the different styles he was working in to appeal to different patrons.”
This 1796 watercolor shows four artists, including artist Gangaram Tambat, working together to capture the temples on the top of Parvati Hill, a main site of worship for the Maratha court in Poona, India.
Two self-portraits by Gangaram demonstrate the fluidity of his style, she said. In one, he is seated with a drawing board on his knee, a traditional pose for Indian artists, according to the label text. In the other, Gangaram is depicted with three other artists as they work together to depict temples perched atop a hill in Poona. The group is using an optical instrument, possibly a camera obscura, a device used to project an image onto a drawing board.
Works by portraitist Lam Qua blend artistry and medical history.
The artist Lam Qua, another artist featured in the show, operated a prosperous studio in Canton where he and his assistants produced bold, richly colored oil portraits.
Little is known about the identity of the sitter in this portrait attributed to the studio of Lam Qua. Her inviting gesture and gaze suggest she might represent one of the many women who worked on Canton’s “flower boats,” where sex workers and entertainers attracted locals and traders alike, according to the exhibit text.
In 1834, Peter Parker, a Yale-trained physician and Presbyterian minister, established a hospital in Canton. Lam Qua documented many of his patients’ conditions. The Yale Historical Medical Library houses a collection of 86 of Lam Qua’s portraits of Parker’s patients. Three examples are on view in the exhibition.
The only known pair of “before and after” surgical portraits depict a patient named Po A-Shing who had surgery to remove a massive tumor on his left arm. The “after” image depicts Po A-Shing, who was 23 years old, standing in profile by the water with a blue cloak draped over right shoulder. He is bare-chested. His left arm has been amputated.
The Yale Center for British Art is located at 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, between High and York Streets. Admission is free. For hours and directions, visit the museum’s website.
