Indian Art in Great Britain

Abstract

IT is not surprising, in view of the long and intimate connexion of Great Britain and India, to learn that a search has revealed a number of examples of Indian art in public and private collections in Great Britain, which in the aggregate and in artistic quality and historic interest is impressive. In the last few months, Dr. K. N. Sita Ram, curator of the Central Museum, Lahore, according to a note in The Times of April 20, has been engaged in a comprehensive survey of the examples of Indian art and archaeology in museums and art galleries throughout the British Isles. After identifying and cataloguing the Buddhist sculptures from Amravati in the British Museum, at the suggestion and with the cooperation of the Museums Association he has examined some fifty collections, travelling so far afield as Elgin, Dublin and Belfast. Not only did he assist in rearranging and relabelling these collections, but he also advised on spurious or indifferent specimens, and in a number of instances discovered treasures which had been overlooked or of which the interest had been unrecognised. As a result of his inspection, choice specimens from private collections in several instances have now been placed in local museums. Among the rarer and more unexpected of his finds are examples of Buddhist sculpture from Java at Edinburgh, Dublin, Elgin and Hawick, fine paintings of the Rajput, Kangra, and Moghul Schools at Halifax, Manchester and Edinburgh, and sculptures of the great Gandhara period and South Indian bronzes in many collections. Dr. Sita Ram, it is stated, is confident that without unduly depleting local collections, it is possible to get together ample material from Java and India now in the British Isles to provide for the central museum of Asiatic art and antiquities, which those who are interested in British national collections are convinced is an urgent need of the present time.