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7 - An Ephemeral Display within an Ephemeral Museum : The East India Company Contribution to the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 June 2021
Summary
Abstract
This chapter seeks to reconstruct Saloon G at the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857. Devoted primarily to objects from the Indian subcontinent, this section of the ground-breaking, blockbuster exhibition was drawn mostly from the holdings of the Honorable East India Company. India and Manchester were linked through their common interest in cotton; however, there was surprisingly little commentary at the time about the connections. The turmoil in India that began days after the opening Art Treasures Palace had a decided impact on the objects that were on view to the public. With little extant documentation about the specific works on view, this chapter confronts mid-Victorian attitudes to the applied arts, as well as objects produced in the “colonies.”
Keywords: Manchester, East India Company, cotton, textiles, jewelry
Introduction: Manchester and Meerut in May 1857
It is an understatement to describe the Indian Mutiny (also known as the Indian Rebellion or the War of Independence) that began in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, on 10 May 1857, as a turning point in British Imperial administration. Thousands of miles away and on a seemingly opposite pole of concern, the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition that Prince Albert had inaugurated just days before on 5 May in Britain's industrial north was a pathbreaking event for art in Britain and the history of art more generally. These two events shared space on the pages of British newspapers, which were filled with reports of the violence in South Asia, as well as laudatory accounts of the grand opening of the Art Treasures Palace and the priceless works inside. Surprisingly, although cotton was a common thread that formed an important trading and manufacturing bond between Manchester and India, and the exhibition included a dedicated space for works of art lent by the Honourable East India Company, contemporary commentators made little connection between the horrors of colonial rule and the cultural philanthropy that was celebrated in Lancashire.
The absence of commentary at that time continues through today. Noticeably missing from the extensive but ever-growing recent scholarship on the Company, the events in India in that year, or British colonialism, is any in-depth discussion of the Art Treasures Exhibition and the Indian objects on display there through October.
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- The Home, Nations and Empires, and Ephemeral Exhibition Spaces1750–1918, pp. 181 - 208Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2021