Chandan Kashyap S K
Assistant Professor, BMS School of Architecture, Yelahanka, Bengaluru. Email: chandansmg@gmail.com
Volume 5, Number 1, 2021 I Full-Text PDF
Abstract
Being one of the great treasure houses of the invaluable art heritage, Mysore Princely State, similar to other places of India, produced aristocratic portraits. Most of them maintained the image of courtly people as a backdrop. The courtiers, soldiers and citizens were among these people, who are the prime focus of this study (of aristocratic portraits during 19th and 20th C.E.). Were the(se) aristocratic pictorial compositions employed as a means of heralding as well as maintaining the hierarchical system? In this direction, the visual language, the styles, compositional aspects, themes and (religious/ cultural traits) symbolisms are explored, by employing the critical lenses (Pierre Bourdieu’s “Field theory”) to read how the hierarchy-based system was visually represented; moreover, to highlight how these images reinforced and celebrated that system.
Keywords: Hierarchy, European academic realism, colonial aristocratic portraits, Mysore Princely State, modern Mysore paintings.