Painters, Ports, and Profits - Artists and the East India Company, 1750-1850

Draws on the Yale Center for British Art's rich collection to critically reconsider the vibrant creative exchanges between artists in India, China, and Britain during a period ruthlessly driven by commerce
 
Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750-1850 tells the story of the remarkable creative exchanges that coincided with the rise of one of the most ruthless and powerful corporations in history. Scholarship on this period often separates Indian, Chinese, and British artists; Painters, Ports, and Profits instead foregrounds the vital interactions between their practices. Artistic experimentation with papers, pigments, and other materials produced works of astonishing beauty and variety. Compelled by new subjects and techniques, these artists, many now unknown, had a profound effect on visual and material culture within and beyond Asia.
Edited by curators Laurel O. Peterson and Holly Shaffer, Painters, Ports, and Profits features more than one hundred objects drawn primarily from the Yale Center for British Art's collection, including architectural drafts, burnished opaque watercolors, hand-colored aquatints, small and large-scale portraits, and a spectacular thirty-seven-foot-long scroll depicting the city of Lucknow. An international group of scholars, curators, and conservators provide rich commentary based on new research.
 
Published by the Yale Center for British Art/Distributed by Yale University Press
 
Exhibition Schedule:

Yale Center for British Art
(January 8-May 31, 2026)
 

About the author

Laurel O. Peterson is the assistant curator of prints and drawings at the Yale Center for British Art. Holly Shaffer is the Robert Gale Noyes Assistant Professor of Humanities at Brown University, Providence, RI.

Product details

• Authors: Laurel O. Shaffer Peterson
• Assisted by: Laurel O Peterson (Editor), Laurel O. Peterson (Editor), Holly Shaffer (Editor)
• Publisher: Yale University Press Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 10.03.2026
• EAN: 9780300286540
• ISBN: 978-0-300-28654-0
• No. of pages: 280
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Antiques; China, Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900, ART / Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions / General, ART / Asian / Indian & South Asian, ART / Asian / Chinese, History of art & design styles: c 1800 to c 1900, c 1800 to c 1900, History of Art, Exhibition catalogues & specific collections, Asian History, Indian sub-continent, South Asia (Indian sub-continent), Early 19th century c 1800 to c 1850, History of art & design styles: c 1600 to c 1800, Exhibition catalogues and specific collections, C 1700 To C 1800, Oriental art, Later 18th century c 1750 to c 1799