Digital Rare Books:
The Costume of Hindostan, elucidated by sixty coloured engravings
By Balthazar Solvyns (1760-1824)
Published by Edward Orme, London - 1804

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Flemish artist Francois Balthazar Solvyns is little known, but his series of etchings of the Hindus provides a compelling portrait of India 200 years ago, says ZERIN ANKLESARIA in The Hindu, Sep 12, 2004

THE British artists of the Raj were fascinated by the exotic landscapes and architectures of the subcontinent, which they never tired of depicting in the two modes in vogue at the time. The vastness and grandeur of mountain ranges were evoked in the Sublime, while the Picturesque was considered more suitable for buildings and scenic landscapes with cliffs, waterfalls and ruins.

The Flemish painter Balthazar Solvyns stood outside this tradition. Born in Antwerp and trained as a marine artist, he excelled in portraying the busy life of ports. In 1790, at the age of 30, he moved to Calcutta, the City of Palaces, described by a French artistocrats as "the handsomest town in Asia, one of the finest in the world", where many European artists had gone to seek their fortunes, with considerable success. In just six years at the court of Lucknow, John Zoffany was said to have amassed 10,000 British Pounds, a huge sum in those days.

A life-long passion

Sadly, Solvyns was not so lucky. During his 13 years in India he pursued untiringly the project which became a life-long passion — to portray the Hindus, their mores and customs, their civil and religious life, their costumes, trades and much more in etchings numbering almost 300. The lavishly produced books based on them, though favourably reviewed, were a financial failure.

This little-known, second-rung artist is the subject of a new study by the distinguished American scholar Robert Hardgrave Jr. who has a number of publications on India to his credit. The subjects range widely, from Indian Government and Politics, and Nadars of Tamilnad, to Boats of Bengal and 18th Century Sikhs as seen in Solvyns' etchings.

Following contemporary tastes, the Raj artists generally painted commissioned portraits or landscapes. Ordinary people interested them but little as we see in the work of the Daniells, Thomas and William. "The Views of Calcutta" by the former shows European buildings, to which streets bustling with activity are a mere accompaniment. Eight years, later, in "Oriental Scenery" by him and his nephew, the human presence becomes minimal and is just a scale to offset ruins or panoramic vistas. Zoffany, no doubt, did portray the natives, but they were romanticised.

Solvyns alone saw them as individuals to be depicted realistically, with an eye observant to every detail, nor was he put off by grime and poverty.

This sturdy refusal to glamorise his subjects accounted for Solvyns' lack of popular appeal. The early reviews of his etchings praised them for faithful delineation, but called them "extremely rough", "very rude", "monotonous and unattractive". Probably they were disturbing too. Fashionable memsahibs sipping tea in their mansions would not like the real world outside to impinge on their sensibilities. Reviews of later editions issued in Paris were more favourable. The book was described as "this most interesting and truest work on Hinduism", and the artist "combines with a truly distinguished talent, a quality that is very rare among modern painters — great precision and the courage to sacrifice all the expected charm to austere truth".

Solvyns himself was something of a misfit in 18th Century Bengal. Being neither British nor successful, he had a natural sympathy for the poor and the marginalised, nor did he find their religion or life-style "benighted." While condemning the gambling and licentiousness publicly practised during his celebration of Ras Yatra and the cruelty of Carak Pooja where the rich expiated their sins by proxy, paying the poor to swing on hooks driven into their backs, he was generally non-judgmental about Hinduism. This tolerance did not extend to the Muslims whom he saw as tyrannical conquerors and corrupters of Sanskritic civilisation, and whom he rarely portrayed. Part 1 of the book covers Solvyns' life and work, while in Part 2 his entire oeuvre is reproduced. This artist himself describes each print, and a commentary by Hardgrave is appended. The scope is truly astounding.

The largest section on castes and occupations consists of 68 etchings, carefully ordered according to The Laws of Manu, in which hierarchy and purity are all-important. Solvyns slips up sometimes, as in his comparatively low ranking of the warrior castes as the author points out, but the number of prints and the detailed delineation place him first among ethnographic artists. He pioneered the idea of "art as information", and became in this sense a precursor of The Company School. These are not pleasing portrayals, but the drab, melancholy figures convey a truer sense of the sadness and poverty of ordinary lives than pretty pictures ever could.

Other sections show costumes, customs, musical instruments (no less than 38), modes of smoking such as Chilims and Cheroots, and modes of conveyance, ranging from the camel and elephant to carriages and palanquins. Native boats account for 30 entries, with as many on flora and fauna. The description of the cockroach's "disgusting smell" and its habit of eating through mattresses and biting people all over their hands, feet and faces while they slept must have thrown the memsahibs into fainting-fits.

Ever-popular subjects were festivals of which Solvyns made 17 prints, and fakirs and their horrendous penances. One is described as "keeping his two hands joined over his head without ever separating them, so that the nails of his fingers grow till they enter into the flesh of his arms". Above all, artists were appalled by Sati, which was depicted in both its forms, widow-burning and, less commonly, burial alive with the husband's corpse. While condemning it in the strongest terms, many Westerners admired the courage of women who went willingly to their death in such a manner. Solvyns was deeply sympathetic. Seeing the humiliations and suffering heaped upon Hindu widows is it any wonder, he asks, that they choose this dreadful alternative to "a life of calamity and contempt"?

The domestic servant

For the Indian reader, the section on domestic servants is of particular interest. Due to caste restrictions, each one could perform just one kind of work, and the number required to run a substantial household was sometimes more than 100. No member of the Governing Council could step out without at least 20 in his train, and even at home, four silver-stick bearers heralded every move from room to room.

Apart from cooks and numerous assistants there were tailors, washermen, attendants to fan their masters, others to keep away fires, and entire hierarchies of housemaids. And to monitor them were the stewards or banians, and clerks by the roomful, who "control, or rather connive, at each other accounts. We are cheated in every article", complained the Sheriff of Calcutta to friends at home.

Solvyns depicts 35 of their "rogues", each dressed according to his vocation, and carrying his stick or dagger or flywhisk or whatever. The book as a whole is an unrivalled visual record of a colourful period in Bengali history.

Hardgrave's devotion to his subject equals that of Solvyns. For years he has tracked down every etching, sketch or painting by the artist in museums and private collections worldwide, and has even unearthed a gold-plated snuff-box made in China, with reliefs on the lid and the bottom copied from Solvyns' etchings of Sati and Carak Pooja respectively. His scholarship is exemplary. The essays introducing each section provide a wealth of information, and chapter one alone has 225 footnotes, while the bibliography covers 20 double-column pages.

Solvyns appears as an artist of unflinching integrity and a man out of his time, international in an insular age. Here was a Dutchman with a Biblical first name of Persian origin and a passion for India, and the only European painter to venture into Calcutta's squalid and dangerous native quarter to confront his subjects face-to-face. An oddly appealing figure, there is nothing about him that you will not find in Hardgrave's massive and definitive tome.

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