The Yale Center for British Art presents 'Painters, Ports, and Profits,' an exhibition of 115 items spanning a century of art and history, focusing on the East India Company's commercial empire. The show includes paintings, prints, drawings, books, and artifacts such as a 37-foot watercolor scroll of Lucknow (1826) and works by Indian artist Gangaram Chintaman Navgire Tambat, who emerges as the artistic star with 20 pieces. It also features prints of the company's opium factory and 'The Opium Fleet Descending The Ganges' by Walter Stanhope Sherwill, highlighting the company's role in the Opium Wars with China.
The exhibition matters because it confronts the dark history of the East India Company—its exploitation, opium trade, and de facto governance in India and China—while balancing that with the artistic exchange between East and West. It showcases diverse creators, including professional and amateur artists and soldiers, and connects directly to Yale University through Elihu Yale, who worked for the company in India. The show offers a nuanced view of how art documented and was complicit in colonial commerce, making it relevant to ongoing discussions about cultural restitution and historical accountability.