Olivia Fraser is a Scottish artist based in London. She is known for her paintings, particularly of India where she spends a considerable amount of her time. [1] [2]
Olivia Fraser | |
---|---|
Nationality | British |
Alma mater | University of Oxford |
Occupation | Artist |
Family | William Dalrymple (historian) (husband), Sam Dalrymple (historian) (son), James Baillie Fraser (great-great-great uncle), William Fraser (British India civil servant) (great-great-great uncle) |
Fraser took inspiration from her ancestor James Bailie Fraser and moved to India in the late 1980s to paint the architecture of Delhi and travel watercolours of India. [3] [4] In India, she mastered the craft of the Hindu miniature. [5] [6] Later, she evolved her own method which is a combination of Indian styles and Bridget Riley's optical patterns. [4] [7]
Fraser's works have been exhibited in top galleries around the world. [8] [9]
HarperCollins published her book A Journey Within in 2019 with a foreword by B. N. Goswamy. [10] [11]
Fraser has an M.A. in Modern Languages from the University of Oxford. She is married to historian William Dalrymple. Together, they have three children. One of them, Sam Dalrymple, is a historian, writer, film-maker, peace activist, and social media influencer. [12] [13] Scottish travel writer and artist James Bailie Fraser and British India civil servant William Fraser were her great-great-great uncles. [14]
William Benedict Hamilton-Dalrymple is an India-based Scottish historian and art historian, as well as a curator, broadcaster and critic. He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the world's largest writers' festival, the annual Jaipur Literature Festival. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.
Maqbool Fida Husain was an Indian artist known for executing bold, vibrantly coloured narrative paintings in a modified Cubist style. He was one of the most celebrated and internationally recognised Indian artists of the 20th century. He was one of the founding members of Bombay Progressive Artists' Group. M.F. Husain is associated with Indian modernism in the 1940s. His early association with the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group used modern technique, and was inspired by the "new" India after the partition of 1947. His narrative paintings, executed in a modified Cubist style, can be caustic and funny as well as serious and sombre. His themes—sometimes treated in series—include topics as diverse as Gandhi, Mother Teresa, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the British Raj, and motifs of Indian urban and rural life. In September 2020, his painting titled “Voices”, auctioned for a record $2.5 million.
Indian art consists of a variety of art forms, including painting, sculpture, pottery, and textile arts such as woven silk. Geographically, it spans the entire Indian subcontinent, including what is now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and at times eastern Afghanistan. A strong sense of design is characteristic of Indian art and can be observed in its modern and traditional forms.
Mughal painting is a South Asian style of painting on paper confined to miniatures either as book illustrations or as single works to be kept in albums (muraqqa), originating from the territory of the Mughal Empire in the Indian subcontinent. It emerged from Persian miniature painting and developed in the court of the Mughal Empire of the 16th to 18th centuries. Battles, legendary stories, hunting scenes, wildlife, royal life, mythology, as well as other subjects have all been frequently depicted in paintings.
Indian painting has a very long tradition and history in Indian art. The earliest Indian paintings were the rock paintings of prehistoric times, such as the petroglyphs found in places like the Bhimbetka rock shelters. Some of the Stone Age rock paintings found among the Bhimbetka rock shelters are approximately 10,000 years old. Because of the climatic conditions in the Indian subcontinent, very few early examples survive today.
Colonel James Skinner was an Anglo-Indian military adventurer and soldier of the East India Company of British India. Prior to this he also served briefly as a mercenary in the Maratha Army. He became known as Sikandar Sahib later in life and is most known for two cavalry regiments he raised for the British at Hansi in 1803, known as 1st Skinner's Horse and 3rd Skinner's Horse, which are still units of the Indian Army.
Company style, also known as Company painting is a term for a hybrid Indo-European style of paintings made in British India by Indian artists, many of whom worked for European patrons in the East India Company or other foreign Companies in the 18th and 19th centuries. The style blended traditional elements from Rajput and Mughal painting with a more Western treatment of perspective, volume and recession. Most paintings were small, reflecting the Indian miniature tradition, but the natural history paintings of plants and birds were usually life size.
Lalita Lajmi was an Indian painter. She was a self-taught artist born into a family involved in the arts, and was very fond of classical dance even as a child. She was the sister of Hindi film director, producer, and actor Guru Dutt. In 1994, she was invited to the Guru Dutt Film Festival, organised by Gopalkrishna Gandhi, the Indian High Commissioner at Nehru Centre, London. Her work was also influenced by Indian films such as those made by her brother, Satyajit Ray and Raj Kapoor.
Arpita Singh is an Indian artist. Known to be a figurative artist and a modernist, her canvases have both a story line and a carnival of images arranged in a curiously subversive manner. Her artistic approach can be described as an expedition without destination. Her work reflects her background. She brings her inner vision of emotions to the art inspired by her own background and what she sees around the society that mainly affects women. Her works also include traditional Indian art forms and aesthetics, like miniaturist painting and different forms of folk art, employing them in her work regularly.
Meera Nanda is an Indian writer and historian of science, who has authored several works critiquing the influence of Hindutva, postcolonialism and postmodernism on science, and the flourishing of pseudoscience and vedic science. Meera Nanda taught History of Science at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali from 2009 to 2017, and later - from 2019 to 2020 - she was a Guest Faculty in Humanities and Social Sciences at IISER Pune. In 2023 she became a fellow with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
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Sunita Kohli is an Indian interior designer, architectural restorer and furniture manufacturer. She had restored and decorated Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House Colonnade (1985–1989), the Prime Minister's Office and Hyderabad House in New Delhi.
Srimati Priyadarshini Lal (1959-2019) was an Indian artist, poet, writer, art critic, art authenticator and curator. She held over twenty exhibitions of her work internationally.
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Anjum Singh was an Indian artist whose works focused on urban ecology, environmental degradation, and her own struggles with cancer. She was born in New Delhi, India, and she continued to live and work there. Singh was the daughter of noted Indian artists Arpita Singh and Paramjit Singh.
Arpana Caur is an Indian contemporary painter and graphic artist. Arpana Caur exhibits dynamism and deep insight in her depictions of women's conditions in modern India. A self-taught artist, Caur's portrayals of women in urban environments reflect her concerns with the issues of our time: life and death, violence, the environment, and women's issues. Clothing is a recurring theme in her work, both reinforcing and undermining the established image of women.
Sameer Kulavoor is an Indian contemporary artist and founder of one of the earliest specialised design studios in India, Bombay Duck Designs.
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Sam Dalrymple is a historian, writer, film-maker, peace activist, and social media influencer.