Trip to the Government Museum, Bangalore
On Valentine’s day, we went on a morning trip to the Government Museum in Bangalore. The museum is really old, set up in 1865, and is housed in the beautiful red building sandwiched between the Vishvesvaraya Industrial & Technological Museum and the Venkatappa Art Gallery.
Here is an image of the building back in the day when there was nothing much around. From Wikipedia
The museum is fairly small with only two floors and an additional wing. The ground floor (above) houses mostly archeological artefacts (majority from Hampi), some very interesting Kodava (?) weapons, some lithos (?) of illustrations of Mysore/Lal Bagh etc. and a random beautiful dressing table inlaid with ivory (no info). My favourite section was the weapons.
The unfortunate thing about this museum is there is barely enough information about any of the artefacts. A lot of them are not labeled, there is no information about whether the prints are lithos and some objects like the dressing table just says Don’t Touch. The museum was quite small and compared to the other museums I’ve visited in life, its quite pathetic, but never the less its better than nothing.
My plan for this trip was to explore 3 things:
- Test out my new camera: Olympus OMD EM10 Mark III
- Practice my standing-and-drawing-from-life skills
- Explore colour grading. I always wanted to use VSCO properly and colour grade a series of images and try and give the batch a certain ‘aesthetic’. Here in this set I wanted to explore a warm aesthetic.
The photographs I’ve taken below are by no means artistic, they were just taken as reference/documentation. Maybe they will come in handy for future illustrations?
The first section was archeological artefacts. Majority of it was pottery, mostly broken. There were also small trinkets and ornamental pieces but the lack of information of what it was or what it could have been a part of was extremely frustrating.
The weapons display was well stocked and there even was a chain-mail suit. I couldn’t help but wonder if they mixed up South Indian and North Indian weapons. As usual there wasn’t much information. The most stunning of the lot was an axe with a beautiful blue stone inlay and hand knives with the most interesting handles. The things that stood out visually to me was a hand weapon made from antler horns and a ginormous cross bow that can actually go unnoticed.
The second wing on the ground floor housed some statues. I’m not too sure about the origins but one thing really stood out for me: a lot of the human features looked very Polynesian: broad noses, thick lips and ringlets of curls for hair.
The top floor housed a mash of paintings from Mysore style to Miniatures. I especially enjoyed the Mysore style paintings where the faces were painted to have such a personality to them. Unlike miniature paintings and other Indian painting styles, this style actually showed emotions and personalities on the faces and they all weren’t just generic expressions with stoned eyes (I’m looking at you, Mughal style). An example of this is the image above of the woman with ash on her forehead.
One thing that put me off was that some of the Tanjore Painting-type artworks seem to have been touched up very recently. Some of the colours looked too fresh to be an original. They also lacked any information which led me to believe they were reproductions to give viewers an example of the art styles and imagery.
I would say its an interesting place to visit on a day when you don’t have much planned. It would be a great place to practice sketching sculptures since they are larger in number, but they are mostly all the usual human subject in standing poses. If you are the kind to pull out small elements from paintings for ideas or would like to sketch ornamental elements from miniature paintings then this might also work for you.
However my advice would be to go around 11:30am and on a weekday to avoid the rush of annoying locals who try and touch things, have their kids running around, press their faces against the glass displays and loom over your shoulder watching you draw. The staff at the museum couldn’t care less if people misbehaved so if you have no patience for this kind of thing then avoid going on holidays.
Below are some scans of the sketches I did on the spot, a detailing and colouring in large areas were done in studio. All of them were done in colour pencils: Prismacolour Premier in a range of earth tones.
All photographs and images (c) Pia Meenakshi unless mentioned.