Tipu Sultan, History Painting and the Battle for ‘Perspective’

Abstract

The military defeat and death of Tipu Sultan in the Fourth Mysore War (1799) paved the way for the establishment of British rule over most parts of India. This event may also be considered a turning point in the history of visual practices in India. The British struggle to defeat this indomit-able enemy on the battlefield was re-enacted within the realm of the visual. This essay examines the question of whether colonial rule signalled the arrival of ‘perspective’ as a compulsory site of viewing in the modern period. Through a comparison of two sets of ‘history painting’, the essay argues that the decisive defeat of earlier ways of seeing and staking a claim to legitimacy took far longer than the military conquest, leading to the emergence of a Mysore traditional style alongside forms of realism that echoed the split between real (colonial) and de jure (Wodeyar) power in the princely state of Mysore. © 2006, Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd. All rights reserved.