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50 artworks from the collection of Charles Greig, a British academic and expert in Indian art, have been donated to the Tate. The collection includes oil paintings, watercolors and miniatures by artists who lived and worked in India during the 18th and 19th centuries.
The museum described the gift as an “entirely philanthropic act,” with Greig donating the works outright and without the use of tax incentives. Greig built the collection over four decades and features artists such as Sita Ram and Ghulam Ali Khan—who capitalized on the new market for their work among British East India Company officials—as well as European artists such as Johan Zoffany and Rudolf Swoboda, and British landscapists like William Hodges, Thomas Daniell and William Daniell. The works in the collection reflect India and Britain’s shared history and complex power dynamics between the two nations.
Greig said in a statement that the main focus of his collection was an exploration of the “deep and intricate relationship between Britain and the Indian subcontinent through the entwined complexities of the artistic encounter. Most of the works were made in the vanished world before photography and they provide us with a visual record of our rich shared history from about 1770.” He called assembling this collection his life’s “primary passion, but at no stage did I ever see myself as other than a temporary steward.”
Notable artworks in the collection include German painter Johan Zoffany’s Portrait of Prince Jawan Bakht (also known as Jahandar Shah) (1784), making it one of only three portraits of individual Indian sitters by the artist to be held in UK public collections; Austrian painter Rudolph Swoboda’s Sepoy in HH Maharaja Srinagar’s Indian Regiment, 23 Years Old (1886), painted for Queen Victoria, is the first work by the artist to enter a British museum collection. The three watercolors by Sita Ram draw on both Indian art traditions and European visual languages.
“These works encompass a unique cross-cultural discourse, it seems to me vital that they are preserved intact to be enjoyed and studied by all mankind. A collection built on a life of study deserves to be universally accessible and I am profoundly happy to see these works find a permanent home at Tate,” said Greig.
The collection is expected to be exhibited at the Tate Britain in 2028. Alex Farquharson, director of Tate Britain, said in a statement that the museum is “always looking to tell new and different stories about Britain’s role in international art history” and that this gift from Greig will “significantly strengthen our holdings of art produced in the British Empire and broaden the range of people and histories represented in the national collection.”