George Chinnery (1774-1852) and the ‘Intimate Picturesque’: Having spent over four years in Madras, George Chinnery sailed to Calcutta in the City of London, arriving in July 1807. He moved into a house overlooking Tank Square and immediately began work on the enormous portrait of Sir Henry Russell, the newly appointed Chief Justice. It was this special commission that brought Chinnery to Calcutta, and he remained in Bengal for the next eighteen years. It was a fulfilling period of his life for besides running his portrait practice, he made many friends especially among the amateur artists. Chinnery also explored the local countryside and, in the process, developed a highly personal vision of the Indian Picturesque. He executed numerous pencil and pen and ink drawings during quiet excursions through Bengal villages with his sketchbook. Chinnery’s subjects include woodland scenes beside a tank with villagers bathing, collecting water or washing clothes, dwellings showing the local inhabitants and their animals - cows, goats and the occasional dog. Vivid studies of individuals, such as the villager carrying baskets suspended from a bamboo pole balanced on his left shoulder also feature in his sketchbooks. In July 1808, Chinnery moved to Dacca, most probably because hi s friend the amateur artist, Sir Charles D’Oyly, had been appointed Collector of the city about six months earlier; he even lived with the D’Oylys. Having been designated the capital of Bengal by Emperor Jahangir, Dacca possessed many fine Mughal buildings of the 17th century, many of which Chinnery and Charles D’Oyly explored and drew together. By 1812 Chinnery, D’Oyly and his wife were all back in Calcutta. Although Chinnery signed few of his drawings, a number were dated. While in Bengal, he also introduced a system of shorthand notes which became an integral part of his drawings. Known as the Gurney System that Thomas Gurney had developed in the 1720s, it was widely used in official circles in the British Isles. Chinnery seems to have learnt the discipline as a child from his father. Many shorthand notes on his drawings contain dates, colour references, comments about the scene, and personal criticisms of details that he considered to be either successful (a vertical cross, + ), or badly drawn (an oblique cross, x). While the Daniells used subtle tones to convey a broad perspective of the Indian landscape and its monuments through their wash drawings, watercolours and especially their aquatints, Chinnery’s perception was very different. He developed a vision that has come to be known as the ‘Intimate Picturesque’. He was not interested in depicting Indian architecture or indeed any structures unless they were in ruins. During all his years in Calcutta, Chinnery seems to have recorded none of the palatial buildings, not even for inclusion in his portraits. Instead he chose to draw, for example, Old Fort William which, by 1818 was clearly in ruins. He invariably preferred the small unidentified structure in a rural setting, such as the village dwelling built of bamboo with a thatched roof. Above all, he was charmed by the natural grace of the villagers themselves, whose elegance he captured on paper with such skill.. In fact so great was his skill that Sir Francis Chantrey, the eminent sculptor, claimed he never saw a figure drawn by Chinnery, from which he could not carve a statue. Chinnery also experimented with a range of drawing techniques - chalk, pen and ink, scratching, and colour washes. Sometimes his works, especially the small wash drawings, seem at first glance to be abstract smudges but when viewed from a distance, they take shape as vivid perceptions of a village or tomb beside a pool. It was this feature of his work that formed the intimate rather than the grand appearance of nature within the Picturesque idiom. Unlike the Daniells and Hodges, Chinnery did not choose his scene specifically. His subjects were all around him in the countryside, and it probably mattered little from which direction he observed the view. Nevertheless, Chinnery was always aware of changes in the light effects on a scene, sometimes drawing the subject from the same viewpoint at different times of day. If Chinnery found a scene to be especially atmospheric, he would work up his drawing into a small finished watercolour. This evocative study of five men beside a pool with smoke rising from their fire nearby was probably painted at sunset. ...Contd.

...Contd. Another watercolour depicts a scene near Midnapore, the East India Company base about sixty miles west of Calcutta. The chowkidar, or village watchman was another of Chinnery’s favourite subjects. This particular drawing showing the watchman seated and the same man standing - both studies have the vertical cross - resulted in two known oil paintings. Without the awning attached to the hut, their almost identical compositions depict the watchman standing in the same pose as the pencil drawing. Although some drawings were dated, places were rarely identified, for such details were unimportant to Chinnery. He obviously felt that his drawings and paintings stood for something beyond time and place, and that beauty in nature as he saw it, was independent and timeless. Like the local people who were surely intrigued by Solvyns portrayal of them, Chinnery’s watchmen, herdsmen, and village women would also have been fascinated by the three-dimensional images of themselves emerging from a few strokes of the reed pen or pencil in his sketchbooks. Of all the artists who recorded local people in their environment, Chinnery with his remarkable sense of observation and brilliant draughtsmanship was able to capture them in motion, or straining their limbs as they struggled with a heavy burden. He conveys the charm of a woman carrying a child on her hip or a water-pot on her head, and even the man who draws smoke from his huqqa appears to be taking a deep breath at the same time. It was precisely these characteristics that attracted a host of amateur artists around Chinnery until he left India for China in 1825. Source : illwa