FASHIONING INDIA'S NATIONAL ART: BARODA'S ROYAL COLLECTION, ART INSTITUTIONS AND CRAFTS AT COLONIAL EXHIBITIONS (1875-1924)

Abstract

With the archive as its point of departure, this dissertation argues that native collectors enjoyed agency in the making and representation of indigenous art genres and indigenized European genres to fashion India¿s new national art which exemplified an alternative modernity. Firstly, the acquisition history of the Baroda Palace Collection and its patron Sayajirao Gaekwad III, who was supported by an international network of resource personnel, gives insight into an ¿exemplar of international collecting¿ who indigenized the European genre of academic portraiture through the work of Raja Ravi Varma. Secondly, Sayajirao¿s engagement with artisans and institutions, namely, the Kalabhavan Polytechnic illuminates adaptation of industrial processes of production to indigenous crafts. Thirdly, exhibition correspondence reveals representation of these cosmopolitan experiments at local and international exhibitions. One sees a consolidation of three sites: Sayajirao¿s private collection, institutional projects and indigenous crafts, in the making of a provincial Baroda category, which grounds the national.