Oil Paintings

India's Love Affair with Oil Painting

Any study of Oil Paintings in India will be incomplete without the mention of the genre of painting which is now known as “Company Painting ”. The East India Company commissioned some artists to record the visual experiences of the new country (India) that was fascinating the British. These paintings serve as the only representations of ordinary people in India at that time. These paintings were also known for the life like representation of Indian monuments and landscapes. They also happened to be India's first brush with Oil Paintings. One of these Company Painters happened to inspire India's first well-established Oil Painter, Raja Ravi Verma .

Raja Ravi Verma and his works need no introduction to connoisseurs of art. He single handedly revolutionized they way India perceived its Gods, goddesses and mythological figure. His proportionate, life-like figures were closer to the western realistic schools of art than the indigenous schools. Therefore he found admirers in the Western Art circles.

After Raja Ravi Verma there was no looking back- India produced many luminaries in the field of Oil Painting. Jamini Roy , Amrita Shergill and M.F. Hussain are now considered to be stalwarts in the world of Modern Paintings. Their works have not only achieved fame but have collected fortunes too. M.F. Hussain paintings command millions of rupees in different auction houses around the world.

Thus the humble mix of linseed oil and pigments continues to cast a spell over art lovers around the world. Truly Oil Paintings couldn't ever have been more popular than they are today.