The Yale Center for British Art has opened a new exhibition, “Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750-1850,” on January 8. Curated by Laurel Peterson and Holly Shaffer, the show features over a hundred works—including watercolors, portraits, and a 37-foot-long scroll of Lucknow—drawn from the museum’s collection and beyond. It explores the artistic networks and innovations that emerged around the British East India Company’s colonial and economic activities in India and China.
The exhibition matters because it sheds light on a lesser-known chapter of art history, where Mughal, Chinese, and British influences merged to create new visual languages and techniques. By highlighting rarely seen works and the stories of artists working within the Company’s orbit, the show invites fresh reflection on the complex relationship between art, commerce, and colonialism. It also underscores the value of cross-institutional collaboration, as seen in the pairing of a bird specimen from the Yale Peabody collection with its painted counterpart.