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Indian Yellow

Making and Breaking the Imperial Palette

University of Washington, Seattle, USA, bailkin{at}u.washington.edu

This article examines the economics and politics of the pigments that British artists used in order to depict non-white subjects and thus attempts to begin to reconstruct the palette of empire. In analyzing the origins, popularity, and disuse of one pigment (that is, Indian yellow) that had particular relevance for painting Indian subjects, I look at the intersection of material culture and imperial politics. The process of visually representing Britain’s colonized subjects of the Raj was, I argue, implicated in a complex set of ideas about indigenous labor and religion that ultimately necessitated a ban on or disuse of Indian yellow in the metropole.

Key Words: Bengal • British colonialism • India • paint • pigment • race and racial science • Raj • skin color

Journal of Material Culture, Vol. 10, No. 2, 197-214 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/1359183505053075


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