Image and object in nineteenth century American collections of East Indian paintings on mica
Date
2003
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
From its founding in 1799, the East Indian Marine Society's Museum in Salem, Massachusetts acquired a number of Indian objects created specifically for the Western market from India. This paper examines sets of Indian souvenir paintings on mica that Americans collected in the nineteenth century and that were not accessioned into the Marine Society's Museum until the twentieth century. To trace the reception and function of the mica paintings over time is to uncover the ways that American collectors along Massachusetts' North Shore constructed ideas about India and themselves. ☐ While American and British demand for typological collections of natives on mica affected some conventions of Indian painting, native artists ultimately made choices about the images depicted in the mica paintings and the specific groupings of types they arranged into sets. These artists likewise “collected” India, plucking native scenes out of their Indian context and presenting collections to American consumers as complete synecdoches, not only of occupational types, but more generally of India. Besides their meaning as Americans' souvenirs, the mica paintings represented native artists' “auto ethnographic” portrayal of India to others.