Painters, Ports, and Profits

Draws on the Yale Center for British Art's rich collection to critically reconsider the vibrant creative exchanges between artists in India, China, and Britain during a period ruthlessly driven by commerce

Painters, Ports, and Profits: Artists and the East India Company, 1750-1850 tells the story of the remarkable creative exchanges that coincided with the rise of one of the most ruthless and powerful corporations in history. Scholarship on this period often separates Indian, Chinese, and British artists; Painters, Ports, and Profits instead foregrounds the vital interactions between their practices. Artistic experimentation with papers, pigments, and other materials produced works of astonishing beauty and variety. Compelled by new subjects and techniques, these artists, many now unknown, had a profound effect on visual and material culture within and beyond Asia.

Edited by curators Laurel O. Peterson and Holly Shaffer, Painters, Ports, and Profits features more than one hundred objects drawn primarily from the Yale Center for British Art's collection, including architectural drafts, burnished opaque watercolors, hand-colored aquatints, small and large-scale portraits, and a spectacular thirty-seven-foot-long scroll depicting the city of Lucknow. An international group of scholars, curators, and conservators provide rich commentary based on new research.

Distributed for the Yale Center for British Art

Exhibition Schedule:

Yale Center for British Art (January 8-May 31, 2026)