A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c20.s1.52

c20.s1.52

they flourish in our happier France ? No artist can be expected to give his mind to his calling in the midst of a people who are either wretchedly poor, or who, if rich, assume an appearance of poverty, and who regard not the beauty and excellence, but the cheapness of an article ; a people whose grandees pay for a work of art considerably under its value, and according to their own caprice, and who do not hesitate to punish an importunate artist or tradesman with the *korrah*, that long and terrible whip hanging at every Omrah's [nobleman's] gate. Is it not enough to damp the ardour of any artist when he feels that he can never hope to attain to any distinction ? . . . The arts in the Indies would long ago have lost their beauty and delicacy if the monarch and principal Omrahs did not keep in their pay a number of artists who work in their houses, teach the children, and are stimulated to exertion by the hope of reward and the fear of the *korrah*. The protection afforded by powerful patrons to rich merchants and tradesmen who pay the workmen rather higher wages tends also to preserve the arts. I say "rather higher wages ", for it should not be inferred from the goodness of the manufactures that the workman is held in esteem, or arrives at a state of independence. Nothing but sheer necessity of blows from a cudgel keeps him employed.'