Introduction
British art instruction in colonial India more or less revolved around one avowed objective: to train local artisans who, it was argued, required scientific training in drawing due to the colonial impression, as iterated by a British artist, art critic and social thinker John Ruskin(1819–1900), that the natives could only draw ‘an amalgamation of monstrous objects’.Footnote 1 Scientific training in drawing was viewed as indispensable to Orientalists and administrators; it would broaden the mental and imaginative faculties and make the ‘natives’ realise the glories of nature around them.Footnote 2 They thought it reflected the intelligence of observation through a co-ordination of eye, mind and hand. By acquiring this skill, one's faculties of perception and precision, discrimination and classification would be markedly enhanced. One significant implication of this policy was the interconnectivity of art with craft, i.e. that ‘art’ was distinguished from ‘craft’; thus the Orientalists assumed that better craft needed knowledge of basic art (drawing).
This paper attempts to see how the colonial administration interwove, yet differentiated art from craft or, in other words, re-defined the whole concept of art and devised policies to introduce new meanings of art into the local society through art instruction in the Mayo School of Arts in Lahore. It was the first art school in the British Punjab. By the time of its foundation in 1875, art schools in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay had already been set up. The aim of British policymakers resounded in the Director of Public Instruction's report of 1883–84 which defined a two-fold objective for the school:
to train craftsmen in the higher and more artistic branches of their crafts, and especially in the principle of design, and to exercise a general influence over the artistic industries of the Province, by acting as an aesthetic centre, a school of design, and source of enlightened criticism and advice.Footnote 3
Such assertions alluded to the assumed inherent inadequacy in Indian art forms for the want of precision that could only be brought in through drawing. To contextualise such articulations by British officials, one needs to emphasise the radical reforms couched in Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay's Minute on Education (1834). These reforms encompassed the introduction of western education, free press and application of utilitarian principles in law and administration. Percival Spear contends that not only classical languages, particularly Persian were set aside, but claims the vernacular, ably championed by Orientalists to the chagrin of the Anglicist, were also neglected.Footnote 4 Thus the only possible medium for the new learning was English. The agenda of the reforms was to train the native to become a citizen. Macaulay's minutes not only laid down the future direction for the education system in India but also set new standards of elitism which were deemed as sine qua non for reforming the society, “sunk (to) the lowest depths of slavery and superstition”.Footnote 5 Hence the coloniser and the colonised constituted an adult-child relationship whereby “the coloniser took the role of the adult, and the native became the child”.Footnote 6 The British therefore assumed as their responsibility “to initiate the native into new ways of acting and thinking”,Footnote 7 which to Krishna Kumar was the “core agenda of colonial rule and education”.Footnote 8
By challenging Kumar's perspective, the writer of this article argues, like Mahrukh Tarapor and Hussain Ahmad Khan, that in the realm of art instruction, the analysis of colonial strategies of ‘adjustment and readjustment’ provide useful insights about the administrative constraints and cognitive failures of the colonial administrators in nineteenth-Century Punjab.Footnote 9 Contrary to Kumar, Tarapor maintains that art education under British attained only partial success because of many limitations, such as contradictory objectives, lack of direction - some schools laid emphasis on art while others preferred crafts - and more importantly students’ resistance to the learning process.Footnote 10 With reference to Bengal in particular, Indian art historians and critics like Tapati Guha-Thakurta and Arindam Dutta too have alluded to the adjustment between the ‘native’ and the ‘western’ in a sometimes nuanced and sometimes in an explicit manner.Footnote 11 The writer asserts that the same adjustment between the ‘native’ and the ‘western’ was practiced even at MSA in the Punjab.
In this section the complexity underlying the intricate relationship between art administrators, the people mostly drawn from civil service and the exponents of Indian art tradition is delineated. The complexity of the relationship is captured through the works of such scholars as Partha Mitter and Tapati Guha-Thakurta, in particular.Footnote 12 They emphasise the imperial motives behind the establishment of art institutions in colonial India. Mitter argues that despite multiple, sometimes contradictory reasons vehemently advocated by colonial art administrators for establishing such institutions, these schools became vehicles for infusing western notions in Indian art traditions.Footnote 13 Thakurta in her early work remains close to Mitter's position;Footnote 14 in her later work, however, she gives prominence to the hybridity of local art resulting from the interaction of the colonised and the coloniser. Such situational analysis, on one hand, highlights the influence of colonial art institutions; on the other, it signifies the internal debates among Bengali archaeologists and artists about various perspectives (historicist versus aesthetics) for redefining the Indian art tradition. By taking a similar line of argument, this article agrees that the British art administrators approached India with preconceived stereotypes as reflected in the works of reputable scholars like G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1830), James Mill (1773–1836) and James Fergusson (1808–1886). However, with the passage of time such opinions and policies based on these presuppositions shifted to meet the emerging needs of colonial economy and to address administrative problems. Rather than focusing on the stylistic analysis of art, which many art historians like Mitter and Thakurta have done so profoundly, this article studies the administrative management of the Mayo School of Arts. This study not only provides insights about the approach of the colonial state towards newly acquired colony (Punjab) but also highlights the adjustment and readjustment of the colonial institutions to meet the continuously emerging challenges, like scarcity of resources, non-availability of trained staff, resistance among the local artisans, etc. Such adjustment and re-adjustment of policies in managing routine administrative affairs sometimes blurred the vision of empire which Edward Said,Footnote 15 Bernard CohnFootnote 16 and the historians of same orientation have espoused so zealously.
Europeans’ preconceived ideas about Indian art can be attributed to their ‘Indian experience’, but it was largely related to nineteenth-century developments in England. Significant among these developments were the construction of important buildings like the British Museum (1832), British Parliament (completed in 1836); the Reform Bill of 1832 which gave more political rights to the middle class; and the British Parliament's interest in reforming art education to increase the volume of trade. Such debates on reforming the art education intensified with the remarkable success of the 1851 Great Exhibition which renewed British interest in Indian products.Footnote 17 These debates also led to the codification of artisanal knowledge, which many art critics believed was lacking among the British artisans.Footnote 18 This sense of ignorance among artisans about their work led to the establishment of art institutions throughout England. Soon after the exhibition, a Department of Practical Art (later called the Department of Science and Art) under Henry Cole (1806–1873) was established to look after the curriculum and establishment of art schools. It is pertinent to emphasise here that Cole was thoroughly influenced by the exponents of utilitarianism like J. S. Mill, Horace Grant and Edward Chadwick, who emphasised the application of fine art to mechanical production not only to improve public taste, but also to improve the aesthetic value of industrial production by redefining the design patterns.Footnote 19 Establishment of Indian art schools should be viewed against this backdrop. This article argues that Cole's mission of improving public taste by associating aesthetics with design instruction and mechanical production became altered in Kipling's project of preserving local art - and sometimes adopting contradictory policies - thus demonstrating a multiplicity of voices and policies within the colonial state.
1. British Art Administrators and the Establishment of Art School in Punjab
After the exhibition of Punjabi products, arts and manufactures in 1864, held at Lahore the debate around the establishment of a school of design (to teach drawing and designing) drew the attention of the Education Committee appointed to enquire into various aspects of art education in the Punjab. The main actors were B. H. Baden Powell (1841–1901), British Civil Servant, writer and art critic; Richard Temple (1826–1902), art critic and civil servant; H. H. Locke (d.1885), the first principal of Calcutta School of Arts; John Lockwood Kipling; and Dr De Fabeck, Principal of Jeypore School of Arts. The committee worked out all the necessary details, but the proposal fell through “from the difficulty of setting apart the necessary funds”.Footnote 20 The subject remained in abeyance until February 1868, when a committee was constituted again which made some headway and drew up a report which directed the school to (1) instruct in Ornamental Art as applicable to manufactures and decoration of buildings; and (2) actually execute work as the main objective. The need for teaching free hand and geometrical drawing was emphasised “so as to enable students to appreciate pattern and form as applicable to manufactures”.Footnote 21
In his report, Baden Powell recommended the establishment of a School of Industrial Art where sufficient theoretical teaching would be imparted to initiate the students into working proficiently. Baden Powell, like Temple, looked at Indian art with derision and termed it as ‘wholly empirical’ and devoid of any tangible theoretical underpinnings. This he considered an insurmountable impediment in the evolution of Indian art, and he believed it was not likely to grow if left on its own. In the report about the state of Indian art, his comments betray the same derision: “. . .the force of conventionality is such that it is traceable in every work and is like blight upon every promise of higher purpose and better execution”. Then he pleaded, “Improvement must come from without, or not at all” and “without the establishment of the Schools of design in this country, will art never make any material progress”.Footnote 22 Thus, the establishment of an art school was deemed very important for preservation of native art. He suggested three branches in the proposed school:
(a) Drawing and Designing. (b) Course of mechanics and physics consisting in theory of mechanics, elements of mechanism and special machinery with class of mechanical drawing. Elementary study of physical sciences would be the mainstay. (c) Workshops-Independent of the two former, so that the manufactures or processes need not limit the courses of design and mechanics and physics actually carried on in the workshops.Footnote 23
Lithography and Photography were included in the list of Baden Powell's priorities as sub-disciplines in the curricula. He also stressed the need to establish departments of Antiquities and the Natural History.
While commenting on the memorandums of Kipling and De Fabeck, Temple advanced his views with regard to “the best curriculum for the school of art”. He argued that the instruction should aim at producing “a knowledge and love of truth and beauty: not to develop industry, nor to produce marketable commodities”.Footnote 24 He espoused the gymnastic nature of art instruction rather than its pure technicality, which would lead to the development and the expansion of the student's mental faculties. That would render the student “capable of receiving and knowing and retaining and appreciating, not to teach him petty knacks nor to strengthen his fingers and put him in the way of making money by means of aimless mannerism or stolid reproduction”.Footnote 25 Richard Temple further recommended water-colour as an easier medium to work with as compared to oil, especially in the initial stages of art instruction. Work in oil would be permissible at a later stage when students were better versed in the technique. Water-colour subsequently became the signature of the Bengal School of Painting.
Figure 1. John Lockwood Kipling (taken from Hussain Ahmad Khan, ‘Artisans, Sufis and Colonial Art Institutions in Nineteenth-Century Punjab’, PhD Thesis, Singapore, 2012)
On the desirability of obtaining the services of good professional teachers, Temple stressed the need for trained men from England or Europe, casting serious doubts on the reliability and devotion of the local talent. Besides a thorough comprehension, what Temple considered most important for an art teacher was his ability to “impart to others what they themselves understand, and know, and feel”.Footnote 26 He also suggested that the Secretary of State should appoint the “picked men” as principals, professors, and assistant masters in art schools just as they were selected and deputed to other departments.
While identifying the problems of the Indian art, Temple pointed out the want of knowledge of the principles of perspective and instinctiveness (rather than the faculty to be systematic) as two major pitfalls that Indian art which needed to be overcome. The ‘line of beauty’, the ‘law of preponderance’, harmonies and contrasts of colour and the rules of composition must be learnt, as established principles; only then could practical rules be found.Footnote 27
Temple's recommendation to establish new schools of art in Lahore or Allahabad seemed quite tenable; thus it did not take long for the Government to put that idea into practice. The Secretary of State for India sanctioned the proposal for the establishment of the School of Industrial Art and Design at Lahore, conceived as a memorial of the late Richard Southwell Bourke, Sixth Earl of Mayo (1822–1872). On 30 December 1874, the Finance Department endorsed the proposal for the establishment of the Mayo School.Footnote 28 The Punjab Government started looking for a suitable principal and eventually selected Kipling for this task in February 1875 on a salary of Rs.800 per month.Footnote 29 Here it seems appropriate to give a brief introduction to Kipling.
Born to the family of Yorkshire farming stock at Pickering, John Lockwood was the first son of Reverend Joseph Kipling, a Wesleyan minister, and Frances Lockwood.Footnote 30 His adolescence and early manhood is shrouded in obscurity. However, he attended some art school, or technical college, after leaving Woodhouse Grove at the age of fourteen. Tarapor contends that the impetus towards a crafts career came from a visit to the Great Exhibition of 1851, which made an indelible impression on the youngster.Footnote 31 He started his career as a designer and modeller at the pottery firm of Pinder, Bourne, and Company in Burslem, Staffordshire, where he worked until 1858. Simultaneously he attended the Stoke School of Art.Footnote 32 Precocious Kipling had an insatiable desire for learning which subsequently won him a national scholarship. That enabled him to “begin designing and modeling under Philip Cunliffe Owen at the earliest art schools and museum in South Kensington”.Footnote 33 In 1863 he was appointed as Professor of Architectural Sculpture in the Jeejebhoy School of Art, Bombay, and in the same year he married Alice Macdonald on 18 March. On 4 April they embarked “on the 12th at Southampton in the Ripon” for India.Footnote 34 It was in Bombay that his son Rudyard was born on December 1865.
In 1870 he was commissioned to tour the North Western Provinces and to make a number of sketches of Indian craftsmen, some of which are today held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. He combined the role of illustrator, for his son Rudyard's books, with the role of art administrator and curator, for the remainder of his working life in India.Footnote 35
2. Kipling and Mayo School of Arts
Kipling arrived in Lahore on 24 April 1875, and after carrying out the formality of reporting to the Director of Public Instruction, Major W. R. M. Holroyd, he took over as Principal on 27 May.Footnote 36 His immediate concern was to secure an appropriate and permanent building for the school, since there was no space immediately available and adjacent to the museum. Temporarily, he secured the possession of a house previously occupied by a Mr Joseph Harrison. Abbas Chughtai, Deputy Director, Punjab Archives, Lahore, contends that in July 1875, the Mayo School of Arts was initially “housed in a rented bungalow, at Rs.150 per month at Kachehery Road for a year”.Footnote 37 Colonel Young proposed the General Post Office's building as a viable option for the school since it was quite spacious though situated “at an inconvenient distance from the railway station” yet “conveniently near to the museum”.Footnote 38 The government did not agree to that proposition. Captain Nisbet pointed to the old hospital in Hira Mandi (the red light area) near Lahore Fort as a suitable place to meet the demands of the new institution. However, Kipling had serious reservations owing to the scarcity of space and inappropriate location of the proposed site. He termed the old hospital as “notoriously unhealthy” and maintained that it would incur unnecessary expenditure to meet the school's requirements.Footnote 39 It was eventually in 1876 that the site for the school's new building was selected near the station library. Money raised from the Mayo Memorial fund was stipulated for the design and construction of the building, which was to be “of plastered brick and Saracenic in style”.Footnote 40 It originally had 5 rooms on the ground floor and a lecture hall 62 feet by 24 at the top floor. That building first came into use for the Punjab exhibition of 1881. To meet the scarcity of the space some temporary additions were also made. The next year Mayo School moved into that building, thus it became fully functional by the spring of 1882. In 1891, it was decided that the temporary additions should be demolished and that a building should be constructed in their stead, with “the portion consisting of four large well lighted ateliers” to be used for technical work.Footnote 41 That portion had been designed by Kipling and Bhai Ram Singh and erected by Lala Ganga Ram, Executive Engineer.Footnote 42 Kipling was satisfied as the work had been done according to his wishes.
3. Curriculum
In the Plan for the Organization of a School of Art, Kipling, in the light of his experience of being an art teacher at Bombay, designed a course of instruction suitable to local requirements. Then he enumerated the courses, reproduced below;
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1. Blackboard demonstration of the first principles drawing. Elementary outline from flat copies. Elementary geometry
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2. Outline from objects. Rudiments of perspective
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3. Light and shade from objects and casts. Plant drawing from nature
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4. The general principles of ornamental design, especially Eastern Modelling in clay from casts, Moulding in clay and casting in plaster, Architectural drawing from examples, Advanced perspectives, Modelling from nature, Studies in colour of ornament, Ditto of still life, Drawing from the living model in black and white, Original design, Painting from the living model, Modelling from ditto.Footnote 43
Kipling stressed “the need for a variety of subjects to be present in the curriculum in order to provide the stimulus of change” for the students.Footnote 44 Competitive timed sketching and sketching from memory one day each week was, in Kipling's view, an efficacious exercise to this end. He also proposed that instruction in woodcarving, lithography and copper etching was necessary for all students in the first three grades. However, in the fourth grade, the aptitude and the will of the respective students would take precedence. As Kipling put it, “. . .the instruction should begin to have special reference to the work by which the student proposes to earn his bread”.Footnote 45 He was favourably inclined to the establishment of a wood engraving class. To him, though “the work done” would be of simple character, its demand was considerable “especially for the illustration of educational works printed in the vernacular”.Footnote 46
Recruiting students suited to the peculiarity of art instruction was a daunting task for both Kipling and Major W. J. Holroyd. The system of art instruction was comprehensively rooted into a centuries-old mechanism of apprenticeship tied up with such institutions as Karkhana and Gharana, as argued by Nadeem Omar in his ‘Historical Introduction’ of Official Chronicle of Mayo School of Art: Formative Years under J. K. Kipling.Footnote 47 Persuading the most eligible youths from the occupational groups of what British termed mistree or rungsas proved quite intractable because the mode of instruction in MSA was deemed divergent to their sensibilities and cultural ethos. The British method of art instruction could be relevant for those already exposed to and initiated in western notions of art and culture - and had a smattering of English language and elementary mathematics or geometry, to be very precise. Therefore, Holroyd wrote to the inspectors of schools and the principals of colleges in the Punjab “calling for lists of candidates from Government Schools who may wish to enter the school of art”.Footnote 48 To lure them to the field of art, Holroyd proposed to offer stipends to youngsters who had a better acquaintance with English. Kipling concurred, although he wanted such provision extended to those who displayed ‘promise’ with the proviso that they could be withdrawn “on the holders proving inept, inattentive, or misconducting themselves”.Footnote 49 It seems appropriate to mention here that Kipling was not forthcoming in dangling material incentives to the students; hence he was opposed to the free education for the reasons set out below:
I venture to urge that as a matter of principle a fee should be charged. There are amateurs of art even among the middle classes of India, and I have observed that paying a fee is more agreeable to the self-respect of such persons as clerks and the better class of natives.Footnote 50
4. Record of the students
Kipling emphasised the need to maintain full records of students’ backgrounds and date of entry to the college. The school clerk was duty bound to keep a register of daily attendance which was one method of preserving order in the school.Footnote 51 Kipling was not as disdainfully disposed towards traditions entrenched in the Punjabi milieu, where every individual had to operate within the framework of his family occupation, as might first appear to be the case. Kipling thought of engaging every student to his ancestral profession. However, he deemed their acquaintance with the basic drawing method a vital skill. That was not as simple a task as it seemed prima facie. Rather, it amounted to initiating the whole lot of students in an entirely different tradition; they had previously imbibed many a century's old artistic ethos rooted profoundly in oral tradition. Lacking cognisance of that perspective and the bearing it might invoke on the process of art production at Mayo School in the coming years, Kipling set himself to the task of replicating the South Kensington way of doing arts. However, Musarrat Hasan's study on art and design suggests something very different, particularly when she comments on Kipling's modus operandi as to art instruction. “One of the first things he insisted on was the importance of the designs of the old buildings of Lahore”.Footnote 52 She further states, citing Kipling's adulatory remarks for the Wazir Khan Mosque.
Figure 2. Mayo School of Art, Lahore, (taken from Hussain Ahmad Khan, ‘Artisans, Sufis and Colonial Art Institutions in Nineteenth-Century Punjab’, PhD Thesis, Singapore, 2012)
The Wazir Khan's Mosque is in itself a school for design. . . . and the painted work is in a dilapidated state of neglect. Under these circumstances, it seems of the highest importance to secure careful copies for preservation in the museum and the school, and there could be no better training for our young decorators.Footnote 53 What is very important here is to underscore the importance of Masjid Wazir Khan, situated in Central Lahore as an object of learning for the students of Mayo School. Built by Hakim Ali-ud-Din Ansari in 1634 AD, a physician by profession who rose to the rank of the Wazir during Shah Jehan and got the title Wazir Khan, the mosque epitomises “the profusion and excellence of the inlaid pottery decoration in the paneling of the walls”.Footnote 54 The principal's annual reports amply corroborate the fact that this beautiful building was deemed in itself a school of design. Year after year, students of the school produced careful copies of its designs to improve their designing skills. It was a vicarious way of paying tribute to the artisans who conceived and created one of the most stunningly beautiful designs ever made in South Asia.Footnote 55 While designing a building for the Lahore Museum, Kipling uncannily referred to Masjid Wazir Khan, reflecting his obsession with that building; as he once said that, “It is not probable that we should at once surpass the beautiful work on Wazir Khan's mosque, but we could certainly produce something of a distinctive and artistic character, which might result eventually in the resuscitation of a dying craft”.Footnote 56
5. Instructing the Natives: Students of the MSA
The initial intake in 1875–6 comprised of 88 students of whom 49 were Muslims, 24 Hindus, 12 Sikhs and three Christian boys.Footnote 57 All of them came from the middle ranks of Punjabi society with quite a few of them from artisanal families. The munshi or naukripesha loosely translated as the white collared class also had a fair representation in the student body of the school. The former, as reported by the principal in his annual report, showed ‘considerable aptitude’ and ‘great interest’ in their work, whilst the latter evinced little interest and earnestness. In the overall estimation of the principal, the students did better than he expected, with many of them said to have begun to ‘exhibit special technical aptitudes’.Footnote 58 In the first year, the majority of the students were instructed in the elements of drawing from demonstrations on the blackboard and flat examples, while some of them were taught to draw from objects.
In his recommendations, Kipling envisaged “the first efforts of the school might well be devoted to an attempt to train a few men to assist in building the physical infrastructure, and also in administrative as well as academic business of the School of Art and Museum”.Footnote 59 That wish came true when promising young men like Bhai Ram Singh, Khan Bahadur Munshi Sher Muhammad, Muhammad Din, Amir Buksh, Miran Baksh and Edwin Holder returned to teach and assist in the administration of the school. Bhai Ram Singh and Sher Muhammad were prized scions of Mayo School who made lasting contributions by projecting the utilitarian image of their parent institution. Their contribution will be dilated in the later sections. Consequently, within a few years of its existence the school established sufficient good reputation to undertake several assignments for designing furniture for institutions like Government College Lahore and the Punjab Club, preparing wood block advertisements, maps and plans for the C&MG, and a carved showcase for the Melbourne Exhibition in 1879. These assignments apart, the students trained at the Mayo School were very easily employed by government departments like Public Works or in schools as art instructors. In 1879 Kipling set up a potter's kiln “to direct terracotta as the future decorative material for official buildings in the Punjab”.Footnote 60
Besides catering to the needs of its own students, the school also facilitated the boys of the carpentry school, functioning at the veranda of Director's office, by providing them elementary instruction in reading and writing the vernacular and arithmetic. Kipling had an extraordinary interest in setting up such industrial schools, subject to the availability of sufficient resources, under the super-ordination of the Principal of the School of Industrial Art. These schools could act as nurseries, supplying from amongst their pupils the best possible material for the School of Art. The school of carpentry came under the direct supervision of Kipling as early as 1876. It entailed its merger with the Mayo School. Its pupils formed over one-third of the total numbers of the school of industrial art.Footnote 61
Initial years saw some fluctuation in the number of the students but gradually it became more stable, as is evident from the schedule (A). In 1879, the number of the students fell to a paltry 55.Footnote 62 Kipling proceeded on furlough in March 1878 for a year.Footnote 63 Garrick who officiated in his absence, however, did not take “a falling off in the number of elementary students” as an indication of decline in the school. The public had, according to Garrick, realised that Mayo School of Industrial Arts was a technical school where the essential prerequisite was aptitude and “not a sort of forlorn hope and refuge for aimless school boys, who would like to enjoy a scholarship here till something turns up”.Footnote 64 Garrick's main contribution to the school's development was the introduction of photography as a subject. The number of the students fell to its lowest ever, 43, in 1881. However, that was possibly due to the raging cholera epidemic that beset the whole province.Footnote 65 The preparation for the Punjab exhibition, which interrupted regular class work, may also have been a factor contributing to the drop of the number. That phase of diminishing enrollment proved ephemeral as it attained a good measure of stability with 62 students admitted to MSA in the 1883–84 session and their number incrementally swelled to 217 in 1898–99.
The institution undoubtedly benefited from official patronage in coming out of the lean patch. In October 1881, the attention of the deputy commissioners of various districts was solicited in persuading promising youths engaged in local industries to join the school. Subsistence allowance was promised as incentive for such students. That method yielded positive results and Kasur, Jhang, Gujrat, Hoshiarpur and Nabha State each contributed one or two students.Footnote 66 The Principal reported “an improvement in the general tone and spirit of the school” affected to some extent by the “convenient and well lighted rooms of the new building”.
Increased enrollment may also have been encouraged by the steady growth in the range of courses that were offered. The process of instruction was initially confined only to basic elements of drawing performed on the black board or teaching a few youngsters to draw from objects in 1875–76, but within four years, instruction was provided in moulding, photography, wood engraving, arithmetic, elementary geometry, lithography, gesso-work and decoration. In 1884–85, the elementary course that all the students had to pass through comprised of:
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1. Blackboard Demonstrations of Free-hand Drawing and Outline from the flat
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2. Elementary Geometry
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3. Outlines from the round
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4. Rudiments of Perspective (Model Drawing)
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5. Lights and Shade from the Round
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6. Plant Drawing from Nature
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7. Elementary Studies of Colour
The course designed for more advance level included following subjects:
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1. Architectural Drawing and Design suitable for Mistries and Draughts men.
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2. Advanced Perspective.
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3. Wood Construction amid Ornamentation, as Woodcarving, Cabinetwork, &c.
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4. Modelling in Clay and Moulding in Plaster, Architectural details for Terra-cotta, Stone Carving, &c.
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5. Modelling from Nature.
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6. Painting in Oil, Water-Colour and Distemper.
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7. Lithographic Drawing.
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8. Engraving on Wood and Metal.
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9. Textile Design, as Carpets, Embroideries.Footnote 67
Kipling attached extraordinary importance to the principles of Oriental Design in all Architectural and Decorative work. The drawings and designs exhibited at the Art Exhibition at Simla (held in 1876) very evidently exemplified such a pattern, where the drawings of Sher Muhammad earned acclaim and acknowledgement probably because they carried both influences. Those drawings also won laurels for Kipling who was teacher-patron to Sher Muhammad and many other youngsters of his ilk. Sher Muhammad was not alone in winning prizes for his work. In the autumn of 1882 the Patiala prize was secured by one of the students for a watercolour picture of the front of Masjid Wazir Khan. Another student exhibited a picture of the corner of the same building which was sold along with the former. A third student got a prize of Rs.50 for a design for a reading room and library at Dera Ismail Khan. A fourth student won a bronze medal and a small money prize at Jaipur.Footnote 68
6. Emphasis on workshop/craftsmanship
At the time of the school's tenth anniversary, Kipling became embroiled in an argument with a redoubtable Punjabi official, Mr Denzil Ibbetson because of his review of the school in which he berated MSA as “a superior sort of workshop”.Footnote 69 Ibbetson wanted the school “to exercise a general influence over the artistic industries of the Province, by acting as aesthetic centre, a school of design, and the source of enlightened criticism and advice”.Footnote 70 Ibbetson exhorted the administration of the school to dispel the impression that it was “a mere superior sort of workshop” meant to make things of public's choice, on their demand.
Kipling's role as the curator of the Lahore Museum invariably encouraged him to emphasise the significance of public exhibitions. Ibbetson saw this as being detrimental to the school's solid academic achievements. That discrepancy persisted for some time and subsequently fizzled out without any trace. Ibbetson and Kipling were only in agreement on the matter of the need for English as the medium of instruction. Footnote 71 By this juncture a handful of young artists from the school had in fact already secured lucrative employment. For example, Maula Bakhsh, a wood carver and draughtsman, found a position in Kashmir to design and superintend the execution of ornamental details in new buildings for Kashmir State; Amir Bakhsh, draughtsman and a decorator painter, was engaged as Head Teacher of Drawing in the new Municipal Artisan's Training School at Amritsar; Ala ud Din was employed as draughtsman to the Archaeological Surveyor to the Punjab Government; Ghulam Muhammad was also employed by the Archeological Surveyor; and Gurdit Singh, a Sikh carpenter, wood carver and draughtsman, secured a position as the Executive Engineer to the Kashmir State.Footnote 72
The year 1885–86 was important for another reason as MSA started getting commissioned work from the Punjab Government. This included work on the decoration of Barnes Court's official summer residence in Simla. Other commissions were for a new municipal hall and offices at Ferozepore, the new mission church at Batala, “three models of gargoyles” carved in stone for the new cathedral at Allahabad in the neighbouring United Provinces and the decoration of the Punjab Chief Court.Footnote 73 The earnings accruing from those projects contributed quite considerably to the Mayo School of Arts’ finances.
7. MSA and Exhibitions
The Colonial and Indian exhibition held in London in 1886 proved a memorable occasion for the Mayo School of Art. Nine medals in all were awarded to MSA, six of which went to the teaching staff and the remainder to the students “in recognition of their services in connection with the Colonial and Indian Exhibition”.Footnote 74 The Principal received a congratulatory letter from the Director of the Royal Polytechnic Academy and Museum of Berlin, which obviously brought immense satisfaction to Kipling.Footnote 75 Nevertheless, not all these meritorious feats could provide sufficient reason to placate Kipling's indignation over what he saw as an irresponsible, irregular demeanour of the students completely devoid of punctuality, discipline and rigour. As he recorded:
The classes from which our boys are drawn are not remarkable for punctuality or regularity, nor is it easy to persuade them of the importance of these virtues in a line of study, that more than any other, demands continuous practice.Footnote 76
His frustration with the inability to instill western values of discipline is very evident from yet another observation:
. . .the care and pain spent have only half the effect that might be produced on better material. In Europe, a teacher is eagerly followed; in this Country, there is a constant sense of drag and push exerted against a stolid vis inertia.Footnote 77
Kipling here demonstrates the notion held by British colonial officials regarding ‘native’ indolence. The value judgments and stereotypes he adopted regarding pupil behaviour were of course part of the wider desire to inculcate western notions of design, while paying mere lip service to indigenous influences.
Of those students who were rewarded, their prizes reflected not so much their natural talent, but their ability to utilise this to mimic western cultural and design sensitivities. The year 1889 once again brought accolades in this respect to the school when the pen drawing of Munshi Sher Muhammad won the prize at the Bombay Art Exhibition. Another student of the modelling class, John David, also won Bombay Art Society's medal for a portrait bust in terra cotta.Footnote 78 Architectural drawings by Bhai Ram Singh too found a place in ‘commended’ and ‘highly commended’ categories, which was no mean feat. This student was later to assist Kipling in the ultimate imperial commission of decorating the Darbar Room at Queen Victoria's Osborne House residence on the Isle of Wight. Sita Ram, another Mayo School student, was also successful at the Bombay Art Exhibition, winning an ‘Ava’ silver medal for a coloured architectural drawing. During the same year, Gurdit Singh won the Lala Karm Chand jubilee prize of Rs. 25 for his architectural drawing. The Marquis of Dufferin also awarded a silver medal to the School.Footnote 79 The accolades of the Mayo School of Arts continued to accrue under Kipling's headship and his legacy lasted many generations after him. Kipling proceeded on a furlough of 18 months in early 1898 until he was replaced as Principal by his assistant Frederick Henry Andrews who had recently arrived from England.Footnote 80
However, the Mayo School did not progress as smoothly as was expected. In fact MSA was marred with several problems and many of those problems persisted for quite a long time. One complaint that lingered on until 1890 was the inability of the students to read and write. Therefore, instruction in the general education (reading, writing and arithmetic) was provided to the students, especially of the second division, in addition to their ordinary work in geometry, drawing and carving. Yet another complaint was about the rate of dropouts at a very early stage. A plausible explanation for the fathers’ decision to “withdraw their boys at too early a period” may lie in the growing employment opportunities for students with even a mere smattering of art instruction.Footnote 81 So although the school suffered in that students often did not finish their courses, they nonetheless were still able to get employed. Sita Ram, Amar Singh, Mehr Singh, Jetha Singh and, from the batch of 1890–91, Uttam Singh and John David found teaching assignments at different places before finishing their respective courses. Similarly, Girdhari Lal took up the profession of photography; Abdullah and Duni Chand found employment as Draftsmen at the local municipality. From the engineering class, Jan Muhammad secured the job of a Sub-Overseer in the Public Works Department and Kashi Ram successfully applied for a similar posting in the Irrigation Department in Multan.Footnote 82 Therefore despite the aforementioned problems, the Mayo School of Arts was increasingly proving its worth in developing artisans trained according to the colonial state's notions of art and design.
In the report of the year 1890–91, Andrews spoke admirably about the staff in general, Munshi Sher Muhammad and Gervaise P. Pinto in particular. He described Sher Muhammad as “quick in imparting to his students. . . new and perplexing a subject as perspective”, and he lauded the efforts of Pinto as a designer and as a teacher.Footnote 83 On previous occasions Kipling, too, had been generous in lavishing praise on Sher Muhammad and Ram Singh as teachers and artists but Andrews's appreciation was even more explicit. From January 1891 the practice of surveying was introduced which proved to be of great advantage to young men seeking employment in subordinate rungs of the Public Works and other departments.Footnote 84 Unsurprisingly this course was soon well subscribed.
By the time of Kipling's retirement, he had laid the firm foundations of an art institution during 18 years of service. Despite his criticisms of his pupils’ laziness, they had produced quality works of art and won numerous prizes. While his greatest protégé (Bhai Ram Singh) received praise from Queen Victoria which was unprecedented, officials in the colonial administration from Governors down to district officials had lavished support and approbation on the Mayo School. Moreover, the School produced many art instructors who went to places like North West Provinces and Oudh, Allahabad, Faizabad, Lucknow, Bareilly, Meerut and Sind. Probably that was why J. C. Nesfield, Director of Public Instruction, North-West Provinces and Oudh, came to Lahore to “learn the best way of introducing the teaching of drawing in the Schools of the North-West Provinces”.Footnote 85 Kipling and Andrews in consultation with Nesfield drew up a “carefully graduated system of studies and series of standards for examinations”.Footnote 86 In addition to that, five young men were also sent from the School to act as Elementary Teachers in the North West Provinces. Nesfield's visit to the Punjab and his consultations reveal that the school was now acting as a model for educational development throughout northern India. This pre-eminence was due in no small part to Kipling's leadership as Principal.
Conclusion
The Mayo School's development must be understood in the context of wider intellectual and political currents in both India and Britain. These include the desire of the Art administrators in colonial India to preserve native culture in the wake of the shock of the 1857 Revolt. ‘Tradition’ was nonetheless understood in terms of western notions of the native Indian and western sensibilities of what constituted beauty. The work of the Mayo School was thus at one level the same kind of imperial response to the blending of the Indian ‘traditional’ with its own cultural values as was Indo-Saracenic architecture. Like the latter, it was also influenced by cultural counter-responses at home to the ‘industrial’ challenge of modernity. Upholding traditional arts and crafts was both an attempt to prevent their dissolution in an age of mass machine production and a harking back to an imagined, idyllic world.
The Mayo School also reflected the inherent right as understood by colonial administrators to speak on behalf of their subjects. Kipling was as patronising to his students as was any Punjab School administrator. He also, like other administrators, fell back on ‘expert,’ colonially produced knowledge to be able to represent and categorise native interests and sensibilities. Moreover as in other fields of cultural and social endeavour, the colonial state was quick to recognise and reward those subjects who were most adept at mimicking its values. The resultant hybridisation reached its apogee with respect to the Mayo School when Kipling's most successful protégé Bhai Ram Singh worked with him to actualise an imaginary Darbar hall in the incongruous setting of Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. In 1898 when Kipling relinquished the charge of the Principal, Mayo School had already anchored itself on surer footings. The traditions that Kiping had set, were sustained under his successors, thus his legacy continued.
Appendix 1
Table 1. Gradual Increase in the enrollment of Students MSA
Appendix 2
Table 2. Rate of Employment among the Discharged Students of the MSA
