Colonial shades | Company paintings at DAG Delhi

The humble custard apple (‘shareefa’ or ‘sitaphal’ in Hindi) is cherished across north India for its intense sugary taste and the zing it adds to otherwise strait-laced desserts. But before I saw several 18th-century gouache-on-paper paintings of the fruit, drawn in the style of European botanical drawings, I had never quite realised the geometric elegance of its honeycomb-like form. The works are on display at Delhi’s DAG, a part of their ongoing exhibition ‘A Treasury of Life: Indian Company Paintings c. 1790-1835’ (on till July 5). As the name suggests, these ‘Company paintings’ (nearly 200 of them, from the 18th and 19th centuries) were drawn by Indian artists commissioned by India-based European patrons.