The expat portrait commission, a continuing sideline of today's ricksha artists.

 

Portrait of doyen of Bengal Studies in the USA, Ralph W. Nicholas, and his wife Marta, when they were in Bangladesh in 1973. Ralph recently retired as emeritus from the University of Chicago, and is currently president of the American Institute of Indian Studies

( http://www.indiastudies.org )

The artist signed the picture "Bengal Art Hall," and painted this portrait with enamels on tin from a photograph supplied by a friend who commissioned the picture. The commissioning of portraits by expatriates from local artists goes back to Mughal times, continued during British colonial rule in India (see Room for Wonder, by Stuart Cary Welch, 1978), and is going on in Dhaka today where similar romantic portraits are commissioned of ricksha artists by foreigners working for various NGOs.

                                                                                            [posted 8 May/03]