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This study of colonialism & art examines the intersection of visual culture & political power in late-eighteenth-century British painting. Focusing on paintings from British America, the West Indies, & India, Beth Fowkes Tobin investigates the role of art in creating & maintaining imperial ...

This study of colonialism & art examines the intersection of visual culture & political power in late-eighteenth-century British painting. Focusing on paintings from British America, the West Indies, & India, Beth Fowkes Tobin investigates the role of art in creating & maintaining imperial ideologies & practices-as well as in resisting & complicating them. Informed by the varied perspectives of postcolonial theory, Tobin explores through close readings of colonial artwork the dynamic middle ground in which cultures meet. Linking specific colonial sites with larger patterns of imperial practice & policy, she examines paintings by William Hogarth, Benjamin West, Gilbert Stuart, Arthur William Devis, & Agostino Brunias, among others. These works include portraits of colonial officials, conversation pieces of British families & their servants, portraits of Native Americans & Anglo-Indians, & botanical illustrations produced by Calcutta artists for officials of the British Botanic Gardens. In addition to examining the strategies that colonizers employed to dominate & define their subjects, Tobin uncovers the tactics of negotiation, accommodation, & resistance that make up the colonized's response to imperial authority. By focusing on the paintings' cultural & political engagement with imperialism, she accounts for their ideological power & visual effect while arguing for their significance as agents in the colonial project. Pointing to the complexity, variety, & contradiction within colonial art, Picturing Imperial Power contributes to an understanding of colonialism as a collection of social, economic, political, & epistemological practices that were not monolithic & inevitable, but contradictory & contingent on various historical forces. It will interest students & scholars of colonialism, imperial history, postcolonial history, art history & theory, & cultural studies.