Kristina Sanne
24 May 2024
In June 2024, we were delighted to present a selection of important and rare works from the collection of leading 20th century scholars of Indian paintings William and Mildred Archer in our inaugural auction of Islamic & Indian Art.
Below, Dr. Andrew Topsfield, Former Keeper of Eastern Art, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, discusses the legacy and collection of William & Mildred Archer.
W.G. (‘Bill’) Archer (1907-79) and Mildred (‘Tim’) Archer (1911-2005) were among the leading twentieth century scholars and collectors of Indian paintings. Both had studied History at university: he at Cambridge, she at Oxford. After their marriage in 1934 they left for India, where Bill had already served for three years in the Indian Civil Service. His various postings took them initially to live in remote rural regions of Bihar, where they became fascinated by the life, art and poetry of local villagers and tribal peoples such as the Uraons and Santals. Bill, himself a poet, made sensitive translations of their songs, which would appear in several later publications. He also became a discoverer of the Mithila mural painting tradition, and a keen collector of various types of eastern Indian folk or bazaar paintings, whose bold simplifications and vivid colouring appealed to his modernist tastes. The Archers’ collecting of Indian art, as well as their extensive later scholarly writings, were in large part an expression of their deep knowledge and abiding love of India and its peoples, formed during the years they spent there before Indian Independence in 1947.
Lots 84 - 89 depicting the Jagannath trio were the first paintings William Archer collected in the early 1930s. He happily stumbled across them outside the Jagannath Temple when he was attending a Conference at Puri in 1933. Puri is a pilgrimage centre and local shops, to this day, sell paintings in large quantities of the ‘Jagannath trio’ to pilgrims and visitors as souvenirs. These works are often characterised by three figures: Jagannath, his brother Balabhadra [Balarama] and little sister, Subhadra.
The present lot and the following three Brides (lots 90-94) are charming and vibrant ‘aide memoires’ for murals in the kohbar or marriage chamber of the houses of the Maithil Kayesth and were collected by William Archer in 1934.
Lots 98 to 104 are a collection of brightly painted caskets and lanterns that are a form of Indian art produced by the Mali caste. The Archers collected these between 1937 and 1938, when Bill was posted to Purnea. These were mainly for use during the festival of the snake goddess, Bishahari. Sections of these were executed on rice paper, primarily in bright yellow, magenta and green, and mounted on to lightweight bamboo sticks.
In the early 1940s the Archers moved to the major urban centre of Patna, where Bill served as District Magistrate at a difficult time of civil unrest. Unlike E.M. Forster’s stiff, Club-dwelling English types in A Passage to India, they befriended like-minded members of the local Indian intelligentsia and met some distinguished connoisseurs of Rajput court paintings of the Mughal period (16th to 19th centuries). Bill now became enthused by the refined and romantic paintings of Guler and Kangra, among other court styles of the old Punjab Hill kingdoms. These Pahari (‘Hill’) schools would become the main focus of his studies and collecting in later years. In 1948, after a final ICS posting to the Naga Hills of Assam, the Archers returned to England. Bill was appointed Keeper of the Indian Section at the Victoria & Albert Museum and remained there for ten years. In 1973, six years before his death, his magisterial survey of the Pahari schools, Indian Paintings from the Punjab Hills, was published, and The Hill of Flutes, his book on the life and poetry of the Santals, appeared the following year.
Lots 105 to 109 were collected by the Archers between 1942 and 1946. They are scroll paintings by the Jadupatua caste of Santal Parganas, the largest tribe of Eastern India. Mildred writes, ‘These scrolls were not intended for sale but rather to equip the artist for a second important function – that of a wandering minstrel.’ The jadupatua would wander from one village to another, gather an audience and slowly unwind their scroll to illustrate their somewhat amateurish constructions of their legends.
Mildred meanwhile had begun in the 1950s her great work of reordering the rich but neglected paintings collections held by the India Office Library (now part of the British Library). Over the years, she published a long series of major catalogues, as well as pioneering studies of Company school paintings (made by local Indian artists for European patrons) and of British artists working in India during the 18th and 19th centuries. In her final book, India Served and Observed (1994), she brought together some of Bill’s and her own reminiscences in an engaging short memoir of their early years spent in India.
The overall composition and soft colour palette are in the style of Nainsukh of Guler and his circle in Jammu. A lot of detail has gone into the subjects’ demeanour, their turbans and fashioned hair. The symmetry of the composition is noteworthy with the striped carpet, geometric balustrade, and the contrasting soft hills behind.
The Archers were held in great respect and affection by all devotees of Indian art. Warm, sociable and generous with their knowledge, they gave valuable encouragement and advice to many younger students of Indian painting. I first met them in 1974, when Bill was an examiner for my London MA dissertation on an aspect of Rajasthani painting. An invitation followed to visit them at home for an evening chota peg. They received me very cordially and I felt honoured when they brought out some of their fine Pahari pictures for an enjoyable informal viewing. Bill also gave me wise advice about a topic for my doctoral thesis, urging me to continue my first tentative work on the Mewar school. He said it needed a proper study, and Udaipur was the most beautiful place in India in which to do research. He also exhorted me to waste no time in writing it up afterwards. Both Archers were great believers in pushing on and getting a job done. In later years, Tim (Mildred) often asked me politely how it was going. I did finish it — in between my museum work — before the century ended.
This remarkable and unique painting with its strong European and Chinese influences must have intrigued and even mystified William Archer. A date on the back of the painting is tentatively written as 1830 with a question mark and the word ‘coso’. A scene springs to mind of the Archers laying down the painting on their living room floor and inviting their close knit circle of scholars and friends to discuss the attribution at their home in North London.
Illustrated top (left - right): LOT 134 | AN ILLUSTRATION TO THE SATSAI OF BIHARI: MEETING OF EYES | INDIA, MADHYA PRADESH, DATIA, CIRCA 1770 | £2,000 - £3,000 + fees; Mildred and William Archer | Photo: Private Collection; LOT 127 | RAJA SURAJ MAL (1613-1618) OF NURPUR HOLDING A HAWK | INDIA, PUNJAB HILLS, NURPUR, CIRCA 1770-80 | £6,000 - £8,000 + fees
It has been an incredible privilege to work on this collection. I have remained as loyal as possible to the Archers’ attributions. In some cases, where I have not been able to find an attribution, I turned to Margaret Erskine for her invaluable assistance. I am incredibly grateful for her time, her input and the stimulating discussions on the cataloguing of the lots. The short anecdotes have mainly been drawn from the Archers’ autobiographical book, India Served and Observed, 1994.
Kristina Sanne, Head of Sale
Islamic and Indian art encompasses works of art produced from the 7th to 20th centuries within territories that were inhabited by or ruled by a culturally Islamic population; from Southern Spain, North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, Iran, and the Arabian Peninsula to India and beyond.
