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The Picturesque and the Imperial Gaze: William Hodges and British Travel Art in Eighteenth Century India

Author(s) Vaibhav Meena, Dr. Aditi Kalra
Country India
Abstract This paper examines the role of the picturesque in shaping the imperial gaze in the travel-inspired art of William Hodges during the late eighteenth century. As one of the earliest British landscape painters to work extensively in India, Hodges played a pivotal role in visualizing the subcontinent for metropolitan audiences. Grounded on Orientalist theory, visual discourse analysis, and scholarship on colonial patronage, the study argues that Hodges’ aesthetic strategies transformed Indian landscapes into politically legible spaces, simultaneously expressing artistic wonder and reinforcing imperial authority. Through an analysis of Hodges’ paintings and his Travels in India, the paper demonstrates how the picturesque functioned not merely as an artistic style but as a visual technology of empire. By framing ruins, temples, riverbanks, and urban spaces within European landscape conventions, Hodges naturalized British presence while aestheticizing political domination. His art reveals an ambivalent colonial gaze oscillating between admiration and hierarchy thereby exposing the emotional and ideological foundations of early British imperial representation. The study situates Hodges within broader traditions of British travel art, arguing that the picturesque became a crucial mechanism in constructing India as both spectacle and possession.
Published In Volume 7, Issue 5, May 2026
Published On 2026-05-03
DOI https://doi.org/10.70528/IJLRP.v7.i5.2160
Short DOI https://doi.org/hb27s3
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