The Jaipur Exhibition of 1883

GILES TILLOTSON

The exhibition of decorative and industrial arts that was held in Jaipur in 1883 under
the patronage of Maharaja Sawai Madho Singh II (1880–1922) brought together the work
of artists and craftsmen from many regions of India, but gave special treatment to the
neighbouring states of Rajasthan, and to the pupils of Jaipur’s own recently established
School of Art. It led to the establishment of a permanent museum of industrial arts in Jaipur,
which still exists and continues to hold many of the original exhibits. One of many ambitious
exhibitions that followed in the wake of the Great Exhibition of 1851, the Jaipur Exhibition
was the first such to be held in an Indian state, coinciding with the International Exhibition
in Calcutta and preceding the Indian and Colonial Exhibition in London of 1886.
The widely canvassed view of such events is that they projected a distinctively colonial
perception of Indian tradition, arts and even society. An examination of the nature and
objectives of the Jaipur Exhibition, however, suggests that such consideration of the British
perspective alone is inadequate to explain it fully, overlooking as it does the agency and
motives of the Indian participants. This article1 considers the Exhibition within the broader
context of the arts and their institutions in late-nineteenth century Jaipur. It also examines
the role of the Jaipur court, of the participating artists, and of the local audience, to suggest
that the Jaipur Exhibition may be interpreted as an instrument that was intended to change
perceptions of Rajasthani identity and the Jaipur State.

The PWD and The School of Art

The many educational and artistic developments that characterised the reign of Maharaja
Ram Singh II included the establishment of a Public Works Department in 1860 and the
Jaipur School of Art in 1866. The PWD was modelled on those that had been set up in
British India a few years earlier, and indeed a Bengal engineer named Colonel Price was
seconded to Jaipur to manage it.2 The School of Art, by contrast, was intended to be
rather different from its counterparts in British India. The Jaipur government or darbar felt
that in the art schools of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay there was too much emphasis on
drawing, which they considered a Western skill, and they wished rather to promote the

1 This article is based on a paper that was presented at the 29th Annual Conference of the Association of Art
Historians, held in London in April 2003. I am grateful for the comments made by Shane McCausland, Toshio
Watanabe and other panel participants.
2 See T.H. Hendley, London Indo-Colonial Exhibition of 1886: Handbook of the Jeypore Courts (Calcutta, 1886),
p. 65.

JRAS, Series 3, 14, 2 (2004), pp. 111–126

C The Royal Asiatic Society 2004

DOI: 10.1017/S1356186304003700 Printed in the United Kingdom

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 112 Giles Tillotson

Fig. 1. Blue pottery from the Jaipur School of Art c. 1880.

technical and industrial arts of more local origin. They received support in this endeavour
from a surprising quarter: the Residency surgeon, Dr de Fabeck, was an enthusiast of
Rajasthani art and history and he agreed to direct the school. From the outset it offered
“a sound practical education in industrial arts” to boys from the hereditary artisan castes to
enable them to achieve employment. The syllabus included carpentry and ornamental wood
carving, stone carving (especially of sacred images and architectural ornament), and various
forms of metalwork from heavy duty blacksmithing to filigree, engraving and the delicate
craft of koft gari – the inlaying of gold on steel. Jaipur had not previously had any tradition of
pottery beyond the rural terracotta wares that are found throughout India, but a decorated
style of blue pottery was now introduced from Khurja, along with clay modelling (Fig. 1).
Other departments covered embroidery, clock-making – to give a modern touch – and, in
spite of the darbar’s declared intention, drawing.3
In the following year, 1867, Colonel Price was succeeded as director of the Jaipur PWD by
another British military engineer, Major Samuel Swinton Jacob. Then aged just twenty-six,
Jacob was to devote the whole of the rest of his career to Jaipur, building up a substantial
architectural practice there. His main brief was to construct roads and canals throughout
the state, to connect Jaipur to the outlying towns and to irrigate the farmland. His first
opportunity to work on a substantial building came in 1870 when he collaborated with
Dr de Fabeck on the design of the city’s first modern hospital. The foundation stone was

3 Opendro Nauth Sen, Report of the Jeypore School of Arts for the Year ending 31st December 1877 ( Jeypore, 1878),
pp. 1–5.

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 The Jaipur Exhibition of 1883 113

Fig. 2. Mayo Hospital, designed by de Fabeck and Jacob, 1870–5.

laid by the Viceroy, Lord Mayo, after whom the hospital was named, though it was formally
opened five years later by his successor, Lord Northbrook.4 The architectural style chosen by
de Fabeck was the newly fashionable ‘Indo-Saracenic’: an attempt to adapt Indian design to
modern purposes. This approach was being pioneered by architects such as Robert Chisholm
in Madras and William Emerson in Allahabad – both cities in British India – and de Forest
perhaps considered it even better suited to an Indian state like Jaipur. The result is a strangely
eclectic mixture of Victorian Gothic and Indian detail, with what appears to be a Himalayan
summer-house perched over the dome in the place of a cupola (Fig. 2). Perhaps we should
not regret that a surgeon so rarely gets the opportunity to design his own hospital, but the
darbar was evidently satisfied as they commissioned de Fabeck also to design a boarding
house for the Jaipur pupils attending Mayo College in Ajmer. Swinton Jacob contributed to
both projects as an engineer, to ensure that the buildings were at least structurally sound.
The year 1876 saw another distinguished visitor to Jaipur and another foundation laying
ceremony. The Prince of Wales, no less, passed through on his Indian tour that was intended
to redeem his reputation and to signal the monarchy’s interest in its imperial possessions in
advance of the implementation of Disraeli’s proposal to have the Queen declared Empress
of India. The Jaipur darbar had at this point no particular plan for a major new building but
a royal visit was too good an opportunity to let pass and they invited the Prince to lay a
foundation stone without anyone clearly understanding what it was to be the foundation of.

4 Jeypore State Public Works Reports for the ten years ending 31st March 1878 (Calcutta, 1879): 1871, p. 5; 1872, p. 1;
1876, pp. 1–2.

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 114 Giles Tillotson

To cover all eventualities it was simply described as a public hall, probably for some cultural
or educational use.5 Indeed it had a name before it had a definite purpose as it was called,
in the Prince’s honour, the ‘Albert Hall’ – and thus suggested an ambition to ‘twin’ Jaipur
with London, even if its royal namesake (completed in 1871) had been named to honour a
different Albert: the Prince’s father.
Attached to this Albert’s retinue was the artist Valentine Prinsep, who did his professional
bit by visiting the School of Art. He declared himself much impressed by “the mechanical
skill and handiwork” – a comment that perhaps conceals a lesser degree of enthusiasm for
the students’ drawing abilities.6 By this time Dr de Fabeck had stepped aside in favour of a
full time director, a Bengali named Opendronath Sen. The school now had over a hundred
students, its intake having widened to include other sections of society besides those who
were born into the profession, and it was succeeding in its aim of turning out employable
craftsmen and draughtsmen. Jai Chandra, for example, won an award for his drawing and
went off to work in Swinton Jacob’s office. The former drawing teacher, Lakshman, who
had been trained by de Fabeck, was succeeded by his younger brother Ram Baksh, who had
himself been a student at the school. Meanwhile the crafts were developing well and the
school published a catalogue with outline drawings of its marketable products – household
items of pottery, brassware and enamel work – with lists of their dimensions and prices.
Especially successful was the koft gari, the gold inlay work that was applied to arms such as
swords, shields and daggers. These items were now made for display rather than for use, and
the market for the school’s products was provided not by hot-blooded Rajputs equipping
themselves for battle but by tourists who were unable to find old pieces in the bazaars. The
period of such objects’ use was sufficiently recent for the tourists to be able to persuade
themselves that what they were acquiring was authentic, but the Jaipur School of Art had in
fact discovered the tourist craft industry.7
After the Prince of Wales had departed, the darbar announced a competition for the design
of the Albert Hall, but although a large number of proposals were submitted none of them
was deemed suitable. In 1879 the frustrated Maharaja invited Dr de Fabeck to have a try – he
had done such a good job, after all, with the hospital and the boarding house. But this time
the doctor disappointed him. He is recorded as having “received a letter and remuneration
from the Maharaja for his services up to date” – which is to say that he was sacked.8
A further setback to the designing of the Albert Hall was the Maharaja’s death in the
following year. Thereafter the darbar decided to hand responsibility for the project over
to Swinton Jacob’s PWD. He immediately began work in collaboration with one of the
department’s chief overseers, Tujumoul Hoosein.9 They had one positive development to
aid them: some other recent activities in Jaipur were beginning to give a clearer focus to
the nature of the building. It looked as though Jaipur would shortly stand in need of a
museum.

5 Ibid., 1876, pp. 2–3.

6 Sen, Report, p. 16.
7 Ibid., pp. 3, 6; Illustrated Catalogue, School of Art ( Jeypore, 1897).
8 JSPWR 1877, p. 3; 1878, pp. 4–5; 1879, p. 7.
9 JSPWR 1881, p. 9.

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 The Jaipur Exhibition of 1883 115

From Economic and Industrial Museum to Exhibition

A catalyst in this new flurry of cultural activity was de Fabeck’s successor, Dr Thomas
Holbein Hendley, a man of enormous intellectual energy who followed de Fabeck’s example
by devoting himself to a range of interests beyond his medical duties. A project that he revived
from Ram Singh’s time was the Economic and Industrial Museum. The late Maharaja had
founded a natural history museum but it was not well managed and it closed down in 1879.
In 1880 the council of the new Maharaja, Madho Singh II, approved a suggestion from
Hendley to open instead a museum devoted to the industrial arts, to display the products of
local craftsmen. From the outset the vision was ambitious but Hendley was also impatient
to get started and so a small museum was opened in temporary accommodation in the city
in August 1881, whilst he stressed the intention to expand it and make it permanent.10
The acquisitions ledger of what was indeed to become the permanent Jaipur Museum starts
with the first items collected in 1881. It shows that a number of distinguished individuals
assisted in gathering material, including General Alexander Cunningham, the founder of the
Archaeological Survey of India, Captain Cole, one of Cunningham’s most able colleagues,
and Caspar Purdon Clarke, an authority on contemporary Indian craftsmanship. Some
objects were purchased from Jaipur craftsmen such as the marble carvers Govind Ram,
Ganga Baksh and Tulsi Ram.11
From whatever source they came, all the acquisitions were recorded in meticulous detail
in the ledger by the specially appointed head clerk, Pandit Braj Ballabh, “a man whose
knowledge and interest in the subject have enabled him to carry out this duty most
satisfactorily”, according to the understated testimony of Hendley who himself served
as Honorary Secretary. Braj Ballabh toured extensively and tirelessly to assemble textiles,
jewellery and brassware from Malwa, the Central Provinces, Gujarat, the western Rajput
states and Bombay. Indeed, Hendley quickly discovered that it was more effective to send
Braj Ballabh on such shopping expeditions than to go himself, because even if Hendley took
an Indian assistant with him the traders soon realised that an Englishman was paying the bill
and adjusted their prices accordingly. He had had a frustrating experience in Poona when
his servant “who had been sent into the bazaar to look for old brass, unfortunately began at
the wrong end with the shop of a curio dealer who, observing that the man was working
for an English master, passed the word to all the metal workers that a search for rarities was
being made; consequently for that trip nothing could be accomplished”.12
But if there were occasional setbacks with acquisitions, there were no problems at all with
the new museum’s admissions, for in spite of its cramped temporary accommodation it was
an enormous popular success. In the report that Hendley and Braj Ballabh presented to the
darbar at the end of the second year of its operation, they proudly announced that it had
been visited by over 270,000 people, an average of nearly three thousand a week. Of the
grand total fewer than five hundred visitors were Europeans, the vast majority being local

10T.H. Hendley, Jeypore Economic and Industrial Museum: Third Report (Calcutta, 1887), p. 1.
11MS Acquisitions ledger, Central Museum Jaipur (1881–1931), pp. 17, 19, 24. I am grateful to Preetha Nair
for drawing this MS to my attention, and to the Museum staff for permitting me to study it.
12 T.H. Hendley, Jeypore Economic and Industrial Museum: Second Report (Calcutta, 1883), p. 3.

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 116 Giles Tillotson

people, with a roughly equal division between men and women.13 And they continued to
come even after the novelty had worn off: within four years of the museum’s foundation the
accumulated total exceeded one and a quarter million visitors.14
Hendley regretted that the rooms were too small to allow the display of textiles. But he
found a solution through a parallel project, namely the Jaipur Exhibition, held in January and
February of 1883 in a large new administrative building that had then just been completed in
Jaleb Chowk, the outermost courtyard of the palace, to a design by Swinton Jacob. Hendley
himself was the curator of the Jaipur Exhibition, which included objects collected from
many parts of India but especially from Jaipur and the neighbouring states in Rajasthan.
Like the nascent museum, the exhibition had an expressly didactic purpose: “to present to
the craftsmen selected examples of the best artwork of India, in the hope that they would
profit thereby”. But the craftsmen’s education was to be under strict guidance. Like many
enthusiasts of craft traditions, Hendley was concerned to preserve the authenticity of Indian
design, to insulate it from what he saw as contaminating forces that encouraged unwelcome
change, and he particularly disapproved of signs of European influence. Thus he warned that
while most of the objects assembled were “worthy of imitation”, some had been included in
order to “show what should have been avoided, and what mischief has already been done by
the contact between Oriental and European art”.15 The irony that the protection of Indian
design from Western intervention should be undertaken by an Englishman, and against the
apparent inclination of the craftsmen themselves, seems not to have struck him.
The Naya Mahal – Jacob’s rather strange new building in Jaleb Chowk – contains a
hall measuring sixty by seventy-five feet; here were assembled the Exhibition’s prize pieces
(Fig. 3). In cases at the northern end of the hall were displayed precious objects loaned by
the Maharajas of other states in Rajasthan, while correspondingly at the southern end were
objects loaned by the Viceroy (Lord Ripon at this time) and by rulers of states in Malwa and
the Punjab. At the centre of the hall were the most valuable of all the exhibits: the Alwar
jewels, the Panna diamonds and the Rewa crowns. These were the most spectacular pieces
but not perhaps the most practical for the instruction of local craftsmen. They would have
found more serviceable inspiration in the long gallery on the floor below, for this room
contained the textiles, leather work, arms and armour, lacquer, furniture, calligraphy and
painting. In the smaller rooms around it was displayed an eclectic mixture of items: Kashmir
papier mâché, rugs, stone carving, some “models of fruit made at Lucknow by order of the
Department of Agriculture”, examples of pottery and brassware from the Jaipur School of
Art, Burmese gongs and pierced brasswork from Isfahan.16
The School of Art’s director, Opendronath Sen, had worked particularly to promote
the new blue pottery and was no doubt gratified to see it show-cased here. Much of the
stone carving and inlay work was also local. Hendley believed that the “finish and technical
excellence of work done at present is, if anything superior to that of the past. This is certainly
true of the decorative carving in the recently erected public buildings in Jaipur” – but he
cited as examples buildings that had been designed by Jacob and de Fabeck and he attributed

13 Ibid., p. 1.
14 J.P. Stratton, The Jaypur-Amber Family and State ( Jaypur, 1885), pp. 90–91.
15 T.H. Hendley, Memorials of the Jeypore Exhibition 1883 4 vols (London, 1884), i, p. v.
16 Ibid., i, pp. vii–viii.

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 The Jaipur Exhibition of 1883 117

Fig. 3. View of the main hall of the Jaipur Exhibition, 1883.

the improvement to the former’s approach: anti-Western and preservationist, like his own.
Draughtsmen in Jacob’s office were routinely sent off on study leave to spend a few months
examining the great Mughal monuments of Delhi, Agra and Fatehpur Sikri, after which
they were able to produce “good designs, which are not copies of those originals, but really
new creations of the same school”.17
The Executive Committee responsible for putting the Exhibition together was dominated
by the four leading arts administrators of Jaipur of the day: Hendley, Jacob, Sen, and the
overseer of the PWD, Tujumoul Hoosein. To keep open communication with the darbar,
they were joined by the Prime Minister, the brilliant Babu Kanti Chander Mukerjee, and
as ‘Oriental Secretary’ they engaged Kanwar Prithi Singh of Bagru, the son of a court
noble.18 The latter’s function is not wholly clear since none of the others stood in any
need of assistance with translation (the service normally provided by someone under that
designation). Perhaps it was anticipated that some of the royal lenders would feel happier
dealing with a Rajput noble rather than with Englishmen or Bengalis.
Jacob, Hoosein and Sen also served on the board of jurors whose role was to assess the
contributions submitted by living craftsmen. To provide an outside perspective, they were
joined in this task by John Lockwood Kipling, Director of the School of Art in Lahore, and
his counterpart in Bombay, John Griffiths. Thirteen gold, 85 silver and 109 bronze medals

17 Ibid., i, pp. 54–55; See also Samuel Swinton Jacob, Jeypore Portfolio of Architectural Details 12 vols (London,
1890–1913), i, preface.
18 Hendley, Memorials, i, p. viii.

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 118 Giles Tillotson

Fig. 4. Armour with koft gari by Fateh Din of Sialkot, gold medal winner.

were awarded, along with twelve certificates of commendation. The star exhibitors included
Ganga Baksh, a stone carver from Jaipur, who won the gold medal in that category. The
brothers Nathu Ram and Sewa Ram of Agra won respectively silver and bronze medals for
their stone inlay work, while the gold medal for koft gari went to Fateh Din of Sialkot in
the Punjab (Fig. 4). Some interesting stone panels on Jain religious themes were exhibited
by Tujumoul Hoosein, though his role as a juror naturally disqualified him from any award.
Another conspicuous exhibitor from Jaipur was the silversmith Lala Kasinath who exhibited
a silver water vessel and a salver.19
In total, seven thousand objects were displayed in the exhibition, most of them in cases
that were specially made by Wimbridge of Bombay, on the model of those used in the
South Kensington Museum. In the course of two months a quarter of a million people,
representing all sections of society, passed through the gas-lit galleries. Hendley observed
that among the poorer visitors the favourite exhibits were the Maharaja of Alwar’s jewels and
an ‘orchestrion’ – an Austrian kind of music box that played discs rather than cylinders.20
The cost of the exhibition – Rs. 33,000–was borne by the Maharaja, who also paid for the
publication in the following year of the work by which Hendley aimed to render its impact
permanent. In the four sumptuous volumes of the Memorials of the Jeypore Exhibition, all of

19 Ibid., i, pp. vi, 17, 71–73, Plate XVIII; ii, Plate LXI; iii, Plates CLXXI, CLXXII.
20 Ibid., i, pp. v, viii.

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 The Jaipur Exhibition of 1883 119

Fig. 5. A vase displayed at the Exhibition, depicted by Ram Baksh, drawing master at the School
of Art.

the exhibits are described and illustrated, either in photographs taken by Corporals Stroud
and Futcher of the Royal Engineers, or in chromolithographs made from drawings prepared
by students of the School of Art, and by their drawing master, Ram Baksh (Fig. 5). The
Maharaja sent copies of this work to museums, libraries and political leaders around the
world so that all might be aware of the cultural achievements of modern Jaipur.
But glorious though the book was, both the Maharaja and the curator wished to make
the exhibition itself permanent by placing the objects in a home of their own. No doubt the
Maharaja of Alwar would want his jewels back, and Panna their diamonds, and some other
items would have to be returned to their no less proud owners. But many of the exhibits had

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 120 Giles Tillotson

been purchased in the first place, and others among the lenders could no doubt be induced
to part with their loans for a consideration. Together these items, amalgamated with the
contents of Hendley’s Economic and Industrial Museum, could form the nucleus of a new
museum. And where better to put them all than the Albert Hall, the building that was now
being constructed by a team led by Swinton Jacob and Tujumoul Hoosein but which was
still in need of a clearly defined purpose? It would require a little bit of adjustment to the
architects’ design, and it would take another four years to complete the building, but this
became the agreed plan.21

The Indo-Colonial Exhibition

While they worked on completing the museum building, there were plenty of other projects
to distract Jaipur’s team of leading aesthetes. On the strength of the 1883 Exhibition they
were invited to contribute to the Indo-Colonial Exhibition held in London in 1886. This
exhibition was made up of regional sections. The Rajputana section was dominated by two
‘courts’ devoted to Jaipur, which were so placed as to provide a point of entry to the other
Rajput courts – indeed, to the Exhibition as a whole since they immediately confronted
visitors as they entered from the vestibule.22 This prominent position is a clear sign that
the earlier Jaipur Exhibition had succeeded in establishing Jaipur as a sort of regional arts
capital. From Maharaja Madho Singh’s perspective, his patronage of the 1883 Exhibition
had established a recognition at the imperial metropolis of his state’s pre-eminence in
Rajasthan.
The Jaipur Courts of the Indo-Colonial Exhibition included the usual range of local arts:
stone carving, pottery, jewellery and enamelling, metalwork and textiles, along with some
ethnological and mythological objects. Amongst other specially commissioned objects were
the impressive wooden gateway and screens through which the Jaipur Courts were entered.
The Royal Commission that managed the exhibition provided instructions regarding
acceptable measurements for these, and Swinton Jacob – or perhaps someone in his office –
supplied “a design for the screens and an elevation for the gate”. But Hendley was keen that
such conspicuous features should also represent a local art and so the gate and screens were
taken to Shekhavati, the district to the north of Jaipur which was known for its tradition of
wood carving, applied especially in the ornamentation of merchants’ houses. Woodcarvers
were here engaged to complete the work. Once again Hendley’s desire for authenticity gave
rise to some ambiguity, for, while he insisted that the carpenters were “allowed to enrich it
by carving without unnecessary European interference”, it seems that this did not preclude
his own exhortation to them to use as many different patterns as possible and to keep it
traditional. Some harsh critics thought that the result was an over abundance of ornament;
but “if the carvers had been interfered with on that point”, explained Hendley defensively,
“then the screens would have no longer been examples, as regards ornament, of pure Indian
skill”. It seems that, to some extent, Hendley had come to equate Rajasthani taste with his
own. The bill for their work was paid, as ever, by the Maharaja. The eventual fate of the

21 JSPWR, 1883, p. 16; Hendley, Second Report, p. 1.

22 See the plan of the Exhibition in Journal of Indian Art (London, 1886), i, no. 11.

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 The Jaipur Exhibition of 1883 121

Fig. 6. The Jaipur Gate, from the Indo-Colonial Exhibition, 1886 (Hove Museum).

screens after the exhibition closed is not known, but the gate survives: it stands today in the
forecourt of Hove Museum (Fig. 6).23

The Museum Building

In 1887 Hendley presented to the darbar his third museum report in which he was able
proudly to place on record what everyone in Jaipur knew: “the collections have at last been
placed in a magnificent permanent home”. The Albert Hall was more or less complete;
some detailing remained to be finished but the building was usable and the collections could
be moved in. The temporary museum in the town was closed so that its contents could be
transferred, and the splendid ‘South Kensington’ display cases were shifted from the Naya
Mahal where they had been languishing empty since the end of the Exhibition in 1883.
This reorganisation occupied Hendley through the winter of 1886–87, but by February
everything was ready for a grand opening ceremony.24
The guest of honour, who formally opened the museum in the presence of the Maharaja
on 21 February 1887, was the Chief Commissioner for Rajputana, Sir Edward Bradford.
Hendley made a speech in which he modestly gave all the credit for thinking of having
a museum to the Prime Minister, Babu Kanti Chander Mukerjee. This was quite right

23 Hendley, Indo-Colonial Exhibition, pp. 10–14. See also David Beevers, “From the East Comes Light: A Relic
of the Raj at Hove Museum”, The Royal Pavilion, Libraries and Museums Review (July, 2000), pp. 1–6.
24 Hendley, Third Report, pp. 1–2.

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 122 Giles Tillotson

and proper: it would not do for seconded employees to usurp the functions of the darbar.
The Maharaja also made a speech. Or rather, a speech that was said to be his was read,
as presumably it had been written, by his Prime Minister. This is a little masterpiece by
Mukerjee. In a few brief words, the contributions of Jacob and Hendley are acknowledged,
but the achievement is reclaimed for the dynastic line. “It is highly gratifying to me”, said
the Maharaja – or rather, said Mukerjee, for one could see the ventriloquist’s lips moving –
“ . . . . gratifying to me that I have, with the kind and valuable help of Colonel Jacob, been able
to bring almost to completion the useful work commenced by my illustrious predecessor.
The statement read by Surgeon-Major Hendley will give you an idea of what has been, and
of what is intended to be done to make the Albert Hall an object of attraction”.25
Hendley had indeed been very clear about the purposes of the museum. The old ambition,
“to enable workmen to see good specimens of art”, was still very much alive but it had slipped
to second place in the list of priorities in the interests of the wider community: the museum’s
primary aim was now declared to be “to amuse and instruct the common people”. Items
three and four on his list also stressed the museum’s role in educating the people, and
especially its youth, in a wide variety of fields, through lectures as well as displays. And
then remembering the craftsmen again, the final aim was “to promote trade and to lead to
increased manufacture of rare and beautiful objects”. This last ambition was achieved by the
most practical method imaginable. Craftsmen were permitted to borrow objects from the
museum in order to make reproductions for sale; and visitors could order copies of items
that took their fancy. Naturally this scheme did not extend to the few works of European
art that had been placed in the museum for comparative purposes.26
The didactic and economic intentions of Hendley’s first small museum were thus carried
forward and amplified by the new one. A significant change that came with the permanent
home was that the museum and its contents were no longer considered as discrete entities:
the building itself was regarded as part of the display and it contributed to the central
purposes, because it illustrated and promoted local architecture and its related crafts in the
same way as some of the contents represented the other crafts (Fig. 7). As Jacob explained,
“the endeavour has been to make the walls themselves a museum, by taking advantage of
many of the beautiful designs in old buildings near Delhi and Agra and elsewhere. In some
cases designs have been followed, or have inspired the workmen here” (Fig. 8).27 Hendley
reinforced the point: “Jaipur has always been famous throughout north India for the beauty
of its carving in stone; but as the architect relied upon this feature for the chief ornamentation
of his building, it has not been thought necessary to illustrate this local art [in the collection],
but rather to direct the visitor’s attention to the principal decorative examples in the edifice
itself ”.28
For the details of the Albert Hall to illustrate a local art they need to have been designed by
the craftsmen who executed them, and not by Jacob. Hendley confirms that this was the case
by acknowledging that “although the general design is his, the detail is very often theirs”,
and by comparing the collaborative process to the principle that produced the cathedrals of

25 The speeches are reprinted ibid., pp. 11–12, and in JIA (London, 1886), i, no. 11, pp. 21–22.
26 Hendley, Third Report, p. 8.
27 From a chapter written by Jacob in H.L. Showers, Notes on Jaipur (Jaipur, 1916), p. 80.
28 T.H. Hendley, Handbook of the Jeypore Museum (Calcutta, 1895), p. 2.

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 The Jaipur Exhibition of 1883 123

Fig. 7. The ‘Albert Hall’ ( Jaipur Museum) designed by Jacob, Hoosein et al., 1881–7.

Europe: “architect and workmen have each had a distinct and equally important part in the
creation”.29 An inscription at the entrance to the building records the names of the chief
of these Indian collaborators. The project was supervised by Tujumoul Hoosein, who was
assisted by the artist Ram Baksh and two other draughtsmen, Shankar Lal and Chote Lal.
The two principal masons were called Chander and Tara. Other craftsmen too got to leave
their marks, as each of the columns in the building’s courtyards is signed in Devanagari script
by the mason who carved it.
As soon as it opened, Hendley began the task of compiling a catalogue of the museum’s
contents. They already exceeded fourteen thousand items, but as fast as he wrote the number
increased: Braj Ballabh’s ledger shows that the rate of acquisition, which had naturally slowed
down in the four years between the closure of the 1883 Exhibition and the museum’s
opening, picked up again thereafter. It took Hendley until 1896 to catch up and publish his
two-volume catalogue.30 In the meantime the museum had been open “without charge, to
visitors of all classes, between dawn and dusk on weekdays”.31 And visitors had come in
numbers that exceeded all expectations. In Hendley’s final and valedictory museum report
to the darbar, written in 1898 on the eve of his departure from Jaipur, he records that the
average annual attendance exceeded a quarter of a million people, and that the total for

29 From Hendley’s speech reprinted in JIA, i, no. 11, p. 22; but see also his Third Report, p. 3.
30 T.H. Hendley, Catalogue of the Collections in the Jeypore Museum 2 vols (Delhi, 1896).
31 Hendley, Handbook, p. 1.

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 124 Giles Tillotson

Fig. 8. A bracket from the Tomb of Nizam-ud-din, Delhi, drawn by Bhora Mal and Bhairav Baksh
for the Jaipur Portfolio, part iv.

the eleven years since its opening was therefore not far short of three million visitors. He
acknowledges the generous financial support of the Maharaja and the darbar, though they
might reasonably have felt that they had got a good deal, for the entire costs of the exercise –
apart from the building but including the purchase of the exhibits, the construction of the
cases and the salaries of the staff – was Rs. 228,014. Braj Ballabh’s accounting had evidently
been very precise.32

32 T.H. Hendley, Report on the Jeypore Museum 1888–1898 (Calcutta, 1898), pp. 9–10.

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 The Jaipur Exhibition of 1883 125

Conclusion

It has become customary to regard exhibitions and museums in nineteenth-century India

in relation to colonial hegemony. They are usually described as projecting and reinforcing
a distinctively colonial perception of India’s arts and society. Much of what I have said
here about Jaipur might be regarded as being consistent with this view; in particular, what
we might call Hendley’s paradigm of perpetual decline – his insistence that the quality of
Indian craftsmanship was always diminishing – and his desire to insulate Indian design from
innovation, to keep it bound by an unchanging tradition.33 Of course, it might be argued
in reply that such attitudes are found quite commonly amongst crafts enthusiasts in other
contexts, and that there is therefore nothing uniquely colonial in their formulation; but this
is not my main reason for finding the prevalent view incomplete. Another standard objection
to arguments about Orientalism is that they tend to deny agency to the colonised; and my
account of Jaipur pursues this objection precisely by exploring matters of agency. Whatever
Jaipur’s Exhibition and Museum may tell us about Hendley and Jacob, they also have much
to tell us about the Maharaja and his darbar as patrons, about the city’s arts administrators and
artists as contributors, and about its public as audience.
We have seen how Jaipur’s arts policies in the period succeeded in raising the profile of
the state both within the region and at the imperial centre. In conventional Rajput polity,
seniority was accorded to the state of Mewar (Udaipur), to the south; but from the foundation
of Jaipur in the eighteenth century its rulers had sought to challenge that pre-eminence, and
from the outset the ground that they chose for competition was trade and the commercial
development of the arts. The episodes that I have described were part of that continuing
strategy. Madho Singh’s promotion of metalwork and stone carving, for example, refreshed
and expanded the policy established by his predecessors such as Sawai Jai Singh II and Pratap
Singh who had stimulated Jaipuri production of jewellery and textiles.34 Much as Madho
Singh and his darbar might have been thankful for the energies of de Fabeck, Hendley and
Jacob, they employed them (as we have seen) on their own terms, and at important moments
publicly reclaimed the initiative.
The relationship between Jaipur’s arts institutions – especially the Museum and the School
of Art – was designed to maximise commercial productivity and public interest. The activities
of administrators such as Opendronath Sen and Braj Ballabh were central to that policy; while
architects and artists such as Tujumoul Hoosein and Ram Baksh both contributed to and
benefited from it. The role of such figures is often overlooked in studies of the arts of
nineteenth-century India, as the now customary focus on the power of British attitudes
tends paradoxically to marginalise Indian involvement. While much has been written about
Kipling and Hendley there has been much less recognition of the parts played by the four

33 In addition to the remarks quoted here, see also Hendley’s comments on Jaipuri enamelling, damascening
and carpet weaving: S.S. Jacob & T.H. Hendley, Jeypore Enamels (London, 1886), esp. pp. 6, 8; T.H. Hendley,
Damascening on Steel or Iron (London, 1892), esp. pp. 6–7; T.H. Hendley, Asian Carpets: XVI and XVII Century
Designs from the Jaipur Palaces (London, 1905), esp. p. 2.
34 For accounts of politics and commerce in Jaipur in the eighteenth century, see: V.S. Bhatnagar, Life and Times
of Sawai Jai Singh 1688–1743 (Delhi, 1974); A.K. Roy, History of the Jaipur City (Delhi, 1978); and Jadunath Sarkar,
A History of Jaipur c. 1503–1938 (Hyderabad, 1984).

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 126 Giles Tillotson

individuals named here.35 Their success can be measured not only by the new recognition
accorded to Jaipur by external audiences, but also by the size of the domestic audience.
For fewer than a thousand of the Museum’s three million visitors were European; the vast
majority were Jaipur’s own citizens, going repeatedly, because of the pride and pleasure to be
derived from a display that visibly placed their own city’s products at the heart of Rajasthani –
indeed of Indian – identity. In short, Jaipur’s Exhibition and Museum, if viewed from the
perspectives of the patrons, contributors and audience, tell a story not of British colonial
curating, but of an Indian state’s self-fashioning and self-promotion as a commercial centre
of the arts – of the deliberate building of a reputation that Jaipur continues to enjoy today.

Note: Figs 1, 3, 4 and 5 are reproduced by kind permission of The British Library from
T. H. Hendley, Memorials of the Jeypore Exhibition 1883 (London, 1884).

35 Their careers have been outlined previously by the present author in The Tradition of Indian Architecture (New
Haven, 1989), pp. 60–84; and Vibhuti Sachdev & Giles Tillotson, Building Jaipur (London, 2002), pp. 97–127.

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