Painting; gouache on mica, The procession of Jemboonadasawmy, Trichinopoly, ca.1850

This picture comes from a set of 75 mica paintings in four albums. They depict Hindu deities and festival processions with decorated cars. They are mounted on paper with an 1851 watermark and appeared at the Great Exhibition of 1851 held in Hyde Park, London.

Artists made paintings on mica (talc) in Murshidabad, Patna and Varanasi (Benares) in eastern India and in Tiruchchirappalli (Trichinopoly) in the south. Indian artists had long used the mica for preserving tracings of their family paintings. They made sets of pictures depicting occupations, ceremonies, vehicles and so on exclusively for European patrons. These works come under the category of Company Paintings (named after the East India Company).

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