Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c7.34

c7.34

All these facilities and advantages are wanting in India. There is not yet a single Museum in the world in which Indian art can be properly appreciated or understood. An Indian museum, well organised on artistic, instead of archæological or commercial lines, would be as astonishing a revelation to artistic Europe as the discovery of the Hindu drama was to European *literati*. But Great Britain seems quite content to leave the discoverer of Indian fine art to France, or Germany, or to American millionaires. The British Museum shows the stolid British indifference to the spiritual ideals of our Empire in the East. The museums in India, generally speaking, are equally unconcerned with them. South Kensington hardly recognises Indian art, except in its commercial and industrial aspects. Standard books on Indian mythology, like Moor's "Indian Pantheon," and typical collections, like that of the Indian Institute at Oxford, give one the impression that all Indian sculpture is barbarous, obscene, or trivial, and that painting as a fine art is almost unknown in India. This is also the impression which the great majority of Anglo-Indians bring back with them to Europe.