Visions of India : Art and the East India Company – The meeting of East and West in Historic Paintings by Indian and European Artists
Thu 1st May 2025 @ 11:30 am - 12:30 pm
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Description of Lecture
This lecture will focus on the history of the East-West trade and the artistic interaction and exchange that took place between European and Indian artists during the age of the East India Company. From its foundation in 1600 until the mid-19th century, the East India Company controlled British trade with Asia, conducting its operations from its factories in India. The connection between India and Britain was not just a commercial one, however, but an intensely visual one, as paintings and photographs from these years reveal.
Lecturer: Marie Conte-Helm
Professor Marie Conte-Helm is a long-established Arts Society Lecturer with a BA in History of Art and an MA in Asian Art and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She was Director General of the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation from 1999-2011 and has held senior academic posts at various UK universities. She has most recently served as Executive Director of the UK-Japan 21st Century Group, and as a member of the Board of Governors of the University for the Creative Arts. She is widely published and has lectured throughout the UK and abroad. She is also an experienced cruise speaker and a Resident Historian with Viking Ocean Cruises, lecturing on many aspects of Asian Art and East-West Encounters. She was awarded an OBE in the 2011 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to UK-Japan educational and cultural relations and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette by the Government of Japan in 2019.
