The Changing World of Visual Arts Class 8 Worksheet History

Q.1. How many categories of imperial arts were there?

The Imperial Art was prevalent in India during the British colonial rule can be classified into three categories: - Landscape Painting, Portrait Painting and History Painting.

Q.2. How did the Patuas and Kumhars develop the new form of Indian Art?

(i) Kalighat painters began to use shading to give a rounded effect, to make the images look 3- dimensional.
(ii) Painters starting using bold, non-realistic style, to show figures emerge large and powerful, with a minimum of lines, detail and colors.
(iii) Though the images were not realistic and lifelike.

Q.3. Describe the images produced by “Calcutta art studio”?

One of the most successful of these presses that were set up in late-nineteenth-century Calcutta was the Calcutta Art Studio. It produced lifelike images of eminent Bengali personalities as well as mythological pictures. But these mythological pictures were realistic. The figures were located in picturesque landscape settings, with mountains, lakes, rivers and forests.

Q.4. In what ways did the Daniell brothers contrast the image of traditional India with colonial India?

Daniells contrast the image of traditional India with that of life under British rule. In one of his paintings he represented the traditional life of India as pre-modern, changeless and motionless, typified by faqirs, cows, and boats sailing on the river. In other painting he represented the modernising influence of British rule, by emphasising a picture of dramatic change.

Q.5. Why can we think of Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings as national?

Raja Ravi Varma was one of the first artists who tried to create a style that was both modern and national. He mastered the Western art of oil painting and realistic life study, but painted themes from Indian mythology. He dramatised on canvas, scene after scene from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. From the 1880s, Ravi Varma’s mythological paintings became the rage among Indian princes and art collectors.

Q.6. Describe the subject of Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings.

Raja Ravi Varma was one of the first artists who tried to create a style that was both modern and national. He mastered the Western art of oil painting and realistic life study, but painted themes from Indian mythology. He dramatised on canvas, scene after scene from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, drawing on the theatrical performances of mythological stories that he witnessed during his tour of the Bombay Presidency.

Q.7. Why do you think some artists wanted to develop a national style of art?

Some artists rejected the art of Ravi Varma as imitative and westernised and declared that such a style was unsuitable for depicting the nation’s ancient myths and legends. They felt that a genuine Indian style of painting had to draw inspiration from non-Western art traditions, and try to capture the spiritual essence of the East. So they broke away from the convention of oil painting and the realistic style, and turned for inspiration to medieval Indian traditions of miniature painting and the ancient art of mural painting in the Ajanta caves.

Q.8. What kind of paintings came to be known as Company paintings?

British officials, who found the world in the colonies different from that back home, wanted images through which they could understand India, remember their life in India, and depict India to the Western world. So we find local painters producing a vast number of images of local plants and animals, historical buildings and monuments, festivals and processions, trades and crafts, castes and communities. These pictures, eagerly collected by the East India Company officials, came to be known as Company paintings.

Q.9. Why did some artists produce cheap popular prints? What influence would such prints have had on the minds of people who looked at them?

By the late-nineteenth century, mechanical printing presses were set up in different parts of India, which allowed prints to be produced in even larger numbers. These prints could therefore be sold cheap in the market. Even the poor could buy them. With the spread of nationalism, popular prints of the early twentieth century began carrying nationalist messages. For example, Bharat Mata appearing as a goddess carrying the national flag, or nationalist heroes sacrificing their head to the Mata, and gods and goddesses slaughtering the British.

Q.10. Write a short note on kalighat paintings?

Kalighat painting originated in the 19th century Bengal, in the vicinity of Kalighat temple of Kolkata. The paintings developed as a distinct school of Indian painting. The paintings depicted Hindu gods, goddesses, and other mythological characters. The styles of these paintings were characterized by broad sweeping brush lines, bold colours and simple forms.

Q.11. Describe the major difference between styles of Raja Ravi Varma and Abanindranath Tagore.

Abanindranath Tagore rejected the art of Ravi Varma as imitative and westernised, and declared that such a style was unsuitable for depicting the nation’s ancient myths and legends. He felt that a genuine Indian style of painting had to draw inspiration from non-Western art traditions, and try to capture the spiritual essence of the East.

Q.12. Define Gothic with example.

The pointed arches in the buildings and the elongated structures are typical of a style known as Gothic. The new buildings that came up in the mid-nineteenth century in Bombay were mostly in this style.

Q.13. Name the title of the book written by kakuzo. What was it famous for?

In 1904, Okakura Kakuzo published a book in Japan called The Ideals of the East. This book is famous for its opening lines: “Asia is one.”

Q.14. Give a brief sketch of Thomas Daniell and his paintings.

Thomas Daniell and his nephew William Daniell were the most famous of the artists who painted within this tradition. They came to India in 1785 and stayed for seven years, journeying from Calcutta to northern and southern India. They produced some of the most evocative picturesque landscapes of Britain’s newly conquered territories in India. Their large oil paintings on canvas were regularly exhibited to select audiences in Britain, and their albums of engravings were eagerly bought up by a British public keen to know about Britain’s empire.

Q.15. Who was Johann Zoffany? What were the features of his painting?

One of the most famous of the European painter was Johann Zoffany. He was born in Germany, migrated to England and came to India in the mid-1780s for 5 years. In his paintings, he showed Indians as submissive, inferior and as serving their white masters. He showed the British as superior, imperious: British flaunting their clothes, stand regally or sit arrogantly, and live life of luxury. Indians usually occupy a shadowy background in his painting.