Under colonial rule, English officers commissioned local artists to paint scenes. From which erstwhile courts had some of these artists migrated?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → Murshidabad, Lucknow and Delhi
Option (1) Murshidabad, Lucknow and Delhi — Correct. Some of the local artists had migrated from erstwhile courts at these three places.
Option (2) Murshidabad, Lahore and Madras — Incorrect. Lahore and Madras were places where the British set up art schools, not old courts the artists came from.
Option (3) Calcutta, Lucknow and Bombay — Incorrect. Calcutta and Bombay had British art schools; Calcutta was also the centre of British power.
Option (4) Lahore, Bombay and Delhi — Incorrect. Lahore and Bombay are art-school cities, not the courts named for these artists.
Note: This topic was not named in the CUET 2026 syllabus, but it was part of the NCERT chapter. In 2025 and 2026, NTA also asked questions on topics in NCERT that the CUET syllabus did not name. So our mocks have questions from every part of the NCERT chapter, to give you enough practice. Read the whole chapter, not only the sub-topics named in the syllabus.
NCERT (2026-27): “Company Painting …Partly for documentation and partly for artistic reasons, many English officers commissioned local artists to paint scenes around them to get a better idea of the natives. The paintings were largely made on paper by local artists, some of whom had migrated from erstwhile courts of Murshidabad, Lucknow or Delhi. To please their new patrons, they had to adapt their traditional way of painting to document the world around them.…” “Abanindranath Tagore and E. B. Havell …E. B. Havell and Abanindranath Tagore saw a need to Indianise art education in the country. This began in the Government Art School, Calcutta, now, Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata. Similar art schools were established in Lahore, Bombay and Madras but their primary focus was on crafts like metalwork, furniture and curios.…” |