Lord Napier

Lord Napier's address

..in all schools of painting there is a style which deals with the idea and the allegorical. In this method.. the virtues, the graces, the sciences, the arts, the powers of nature, the heavenly bodies and other abstract conceptions and agencies are clothed in human forms which owe their majesty or their terror to the artist, and which are employed in actions and offices proper to their characters. The painters of Europe in compositions of this nature, have largely employed the apparatus of Greek mythology; but Greece itself cannot supply ideal figures more calculated to enhance of awe the mind than those which adorn the mythology of the Vedic Period of India. In that primitive Pantheon, the powers of nature appear either as seperate Divinities or as attributes of one. The waters which embrace the world, the rain which refreshes and nourishes mankind, the fire which vivifies or consumes, Death which opens his dark mansion to all living beings, the Earth, the Sky, the Seasons, Day, Night and Dawn are all personified and glorified with their proper attributes and functions. In all the portraiture of these powers with their appropriate accessories and duties how vast a filed is opened for the Indian Pencil. The form of Indira, with his attendant breezes hovering over the famished plains of Hindustan, might surely more than rival the triumphant flight