A world-famous filmmaker-art lover's magnificent India-centric collection by

All collectors are understandably different from each other. If some of them gather only rare pieces of the highest quality, others set out to collect comprehensively. Notably many collectors of Indian miniature painting also widely buy across other areas like modern & contemporary painting.

If a section of them is greatly fascinated by the Mughals, others relish the brio and swagger of the ravishing Rajput schools. James Ivory’s artistic taste apparently inclines towards the latter, and also towards the light that his captivating collection sheds on the then Indian life and culture.

“It’s no surprise hence that it’s largely built around later paintings showing Indian artists’ increasing interest in naturalistic expression of scenes of everyday life,” a curatorial note to a show of his collection at Francesca Galloway in London elaborates to add: “Personal taste in collecting works of art can be dictated by many considerations, but the fact that this collector is a film director of great distinction no doubt influences the way he looks at paintings.”

Incidentally, it was the 18th century Venetian painter Canaletto who happened to introduce him to Indian miniature painting, and thus to the country and even his entire life to come, as James Ivory reveals. While making a film on the artist, he visited a San Francisco based print dealer, also dealing in Indian miniature paintings.

The collector noticed the dealer showing them to a buyer. Reliving the defining moment of a new turn to his art collection, he recounts: “I moved from picture to picture, taken from a manuscript. On the spot, possibly rashly, I decided to make a film about this new world I had come across. I also bought two of the pages from Ragamala, and so this collection began.” He luckily met art scholar Stuart Cary Welch during his early collecting days in India. As he developed an understanding with the different gallery owners, the filmmaker came to be considered as someone serious in the domain of art.