Article:
An artist unravelled
Sita Ram: Unknown painter of great talent emerges from the past
By Shabana Mahmud
India Today - August 31, 1995

Indian art has just acquired a new 'old master'. The recent discovery of a collection of water colours in a Scottish home means the name of Sita Ram can now be added to the list of the great Indian painters of the 19th century. The pity is, precious little is known about the man himself - except that he was a Hindu from Bengal.

For the past 150 years, his paintings have been locked away in Mount Stuart, a Victorian mansion in Rothesy, off the west coast of Scotland. But the work found viewers when they were unexpectedly offered for sale by the descendants of Francis Rawdon, Marquess of Hastings and governor-general of India in the early 19th century, who commissioned them.

Early in his term of office, Hastings embarked on a 15-month tour of inspection from Calcutta to Delhi, and Sita Ram was engaged to record the events. The artist was busy throughout, from painting the magnificent fireworks display put up in Hastings' honour in Lucknow to reproducing the Qutab Minar in Delhi (albeit with one extra storey). Between June 1814 and October 1815, in fact, he produced no less than 230 large watercolours.

Sita Ram sketching a view of the GangesDespite being so prolific, what makes his oeuvre significant is his mastery of the watercolour technique, never a traditional Indian painting medium. Whether it was a view of the ruins of Gaur in his native Bengal or a distant panorama of the Himalayas from Moradabad, Sita Ram deftly captured the light and colour of the Indian landscape.

His drawings of monuments in their natural setting reveal his eye for architectural detail and mark a departure from the cold, almost photographic way that Indian monuments are seen in so many 'Company' paintings of his time.

All this makes his work a valuable record of the landscape of 19th-century north India before environmental and urban pollution began to take their toll. Some of the temples and ghats along the Ganges depicted by Sita Ram no longer exist, others are in an abject state of neglect, like the tomb of Itimad-ud-Dawlah in Agra.

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Image:
Bird's eye view from above the Opium Godown at Patna - 1814

Watercolour of a bird's eye view from an Opium Godown at Patna from 'Views by Seeta Ram from Patna to Benares Vol. II' was produced for the Lord Moira, afterwards the Marquess of Hastings, by Sita Ram between 1814-15. Marquess of Hastings, the Governor-General of Bengal and the Commander-in-Chief (r. 1813-23), was accompanied by artist Sita Ram (flourished c.1810-22) to illustrate his journey from Calcutta to Delhi between 1814-15.

The British used Patna as a centre for manufacturing opium for exportation and medicinal purposes. The godown or store was located on the river bank and on the site of an old Dutch Factory. This is a bird's eye view from above the Opium Godown at Patna, showing the houses and their grounds to the west, with the Ganges on the right. 'Sitaram depicts himself sketching on the flat roof of the godown' and shows the curve of the earth in the distant prospect. Inscribed below: 'Bird's Eye.- view from the Top of the Opium Godown across the River Ganges and Hazypore at a distance.'

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