An Englishwoman who sketched India before photography took hold
An Englishwoman who sketched India before photography took hold
一位在摄影术普及前描绘印度的英国女性
Long before photography became the visual language of empire, one Englishwoman was sketching the people she encountered across India with unusual curiosity and precision. 早在摄影术成为帝国视觉语言之前，一位英国女性就以非凡的好奇心和精准的笔触，描绘了她在印度各地遇到的人们。
Emily Eden, a gifted artist and writer, belonged to one of Britain’s most influential political families. She travelled across northern India in the 1830s while accompanying her brother, George Eden, first Earl of Auckland, the governor-general of India. 艾米丽·伊登（Emily Eden）是一位才华横溢的艺术家和作家，出身于英国最具影响力的政治家族之一。19世纪30年代，她陪同担任印度总督的哥哥——第一代奥克兰伯爵乔治·伊登（George Eden）游历了印度北部。
Alongside princes, generals and courtiers, she drew servants, attendants, travellers, fakirs, Afghan and Sikh nobles, Akali warriors, hill communities and even the animals that accompanied imperial journeys. Her remarkably broad gaze set her apart from many contemporaries. 除了王公贵族、将军和朝臣，她还描绘了仆人、随从、旅行者、苦行僧、阿富汗和锡克教贵族、阿卡利战士、山区居民，甚至是随同帝国旅程的动物。她极其广阔的视野使她与许多同时代的人区分开来。
More than two dozen of her sketches were published in 1844 as Portraits of the Princes and People of India. They now form the heart of Princes & People, an exhibition at DAG in Delhi curated by art historian Mary Ann Prior, bringing together the complete published series of hand-coloured lithographs made from Eden’s original sketches. 她的二十多幅素描于1844年以《印度王公与人民肖像》（Portraits of the Princes and People of India）为题出版。如今，这些作品构成了德里DAG画廊展览“王公与人民”（Princes & People）的核心。该展览由艺术史学家玛丽·安·普赖尔（Mary Ann Prior）策划，汇集了根据伊登原始素描制作的全套手工上色平版印刷画。
Eden arrived in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in March 1836 to a whirlwind of official engagements and an unfamiliar world. Homesick and struggling to adjust, she did not sketch for three weeks or complete a painting for two months. 1836年3月，伊登抵达加尔各答（现称加尔各答），迎接她的是繁忙的公务和陌生的世界。由于思乡心切且难以适应，她在头三周里没有动笔，两个月内没有完成一幅画作。
But her spirits were buoyed by her travelling party, which included her nephew William, sister Fanny, maids, an ayah, a cook, a valet, a physician and an assortment of pets. 但她的随行人员让她振作了起来，其中包括她的侄子威廉、妹妹范妮、女仆、保姆、厨师、贴身男仆、医生以及各种宠物。
Even before reaching India, the voyage had begun to broaden her outlook as she encountered new people, cultures and ways of life, notes art historian and author Mary Ann Prior. 艺术史学家兼作家玛丽·安·普赖尔指出，甚至在到达印度之前，这段航程就开始拓宽她的视野，因为她接触到了新的人群、文化和生活方式。
“The diversity of people and places motivated and improved Emily’s artistic output, and her natural curiosity sought out the unusual. She meticulously documented her observations through her sketches and paintings.” Instead of castles, churches and English landscapes, Eden increasingly turned her attention to the strangers, costumes, architecture and unfamiliar landscapes she encountered. “人与地的多样性激发并提升了艾米丽的艺术创作，她天生的好奇心驱使她去寻找不寻常的事物。她通过素描和绘画细致地记录了自己的观察。”伊登不再关注城堡、教堂和英国风景，而是越来越多地将目光投向她所遇到的陌生人、服饰、建筑和陌生的风景。
Between 1836 and 1842, that curiosity took her across a region on the cusp of profound political change. Her sketches offer a rare glimpse of the court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, whose Punjab kingdom was one of the subcontinent’s most powerful states, capturing it at the twilight of his reign and the dawn of the Victorian era. 1836年至1842年间，这种好奇心引领她穿越了一个正处于深刻政治变革边缘的地区。她的素描为人们提供了一个难得的机会，得以一窥兰吉特·辛格（Maharaja Ranjit Singh）大君的宫廷。他的旁遮普王国曾是次大陆最强大的国家之一，伊登的画作捕捉到了他统治末期与维多利亚时代黎明交替时的景象。
Eden was as engaging a writer as she was an artist. Her lively journals brim with humour and observation, with names and places often spelled exactly as they sounded to her. 伊登不仅是一位出色的艺术家，也是一位引人入胜的作家。她生动的日记充满了幽默感和观察力，地名和人名往往按照她听到的发音拼写。
On arriving in the holy city of Benares (now Varanasi), the Eden party sailed along the Ganges before continuing to nearby Ramnagar, where the king had a country house. The scene so captivated Emily that she wrote: “We mean to keep our steamer here and to go out sketching in it.” 在抵达圣城贝拿勒斯（现称瓦拉纳西）后，伊登一行人沿着恒河航行，随后前往附近的拉姆纳加尔，国王在那里有一座乡间别墅。这一景象深深吸引了艾米丽，她写道：“我们打算把汽船留在这里，乘着它出去写生。”
Her enthusiasm had not come immediately. At first, the cultural gulf between England and India left Eden deeply homesick. She fretted over women attending church without bonnets, ravenous mosquitoes, relentless heat, the cacophony of dogs, crows, jackals and Brahminy kites, and being confined indoors for much of the day. 她的热情并非与生俱来。起初，英国与印度之间的文化鸿沟让伊登深感思乡。她为妇女不戴软帽去教堂、贪婪的蚊子、无情的酷热、狗、乌鸦、豺狼和婆罗门鸢的嘈杂声，以及大部分时间被困在室内而烦恼。
But as the months passed, she drew prolifically, and her paintings soon became a success, selling briskly at charity fairs in Shimla, winning admiration from the British in India and being copied by Indian artists. 但随着时间的推移，她开始大量创作，她的画作很快获得了成功，在西姆拉的慈善集市上热销，赢得了在印英国人的赞赏，并被印度艺术家竞相临摹。
Prior ranks Eden’s Indian sketches among the finest produced by any British woman artist of the Regency and Victorian eras. Only Charlotte Canning, celebrated for her botanical paintings, and later Marianne North rivalled her achievement. 普赖尔将伊登的印度素描列为摄政时期和维多利亚时代英国女性艺术家创作的最优秀作品之一。只有以植物画闻名的夏洛特·坎宁（Charlotte Canning）和后来的玛丽安·诺斯（Marianne North）在成就上能与她媲美。
Yet Eden’s remarkable powers of observation coexisted with an unshaken belief in Britain’s civilising mission. As Prior writes, she viewed her years in India as “an unwelcome ordeal to be endured for a higher purpose”, framing colonial rule as an obligation to “civilise” the country. 然而，伊登非凡的观察力与她对英国“文明使命”的坚定信念并存。正如普赖尔所写，她将自己在印度的岁月视为“为了更高目标而必须忍受的不受欢迎的磨难”，并将殖民统治视为“教化”该国的义务。
The Edens left India in 1842, looking forward to returning to England. Back in Britain, Emily continued to paint, although the urgency that had driven her to record unfamiliar landscapes and people in India had faded. Her later works were fewer and turned to familiar English scenes. 伊登一家于1842年离开印度，期待着回到英国。回到英国后，艾米丽继续作画，尽管那种驱使她在印度记录陌生风景和人物的紧迫感已经消退。她后期的作品较少，且转向了熟悉的英国场景。
Writing increasingly became the vehicle through which her Indian experience reached a wider audience. Up the Country, her lively letters from India, was published in 1866, followed by Letters from India in 1872. Although her reputation was initially became entwined with her family’s association with the First Afghan War, it gradually came to rest on her own accomplishments as both writer and artist. Emily Eden died in 1869. 写作逐渐成为她向更广泛的受众分享印度经历的媒介。她生动的印度书信集《乡间之上》（Up the Country）于1866年出版，随后是1872年的《印度书信》（Letters from India）。尽管她的声誉最初与她家族在第一次英阿战争中的关联纠缠在一起，但最终还是建立在她作为作家和艺术家的个人成就之上。艾米丽·伊登于1869年去世。