Colour, Art and Empire

Natasha Eaton is Lecturer in History of Art, University College London. She specialises in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British Art and the Visual Culture of South Asia, and is author of Mimesis Across Empires: Artworks and Networks in India, 1765 - 1860 (2013).

• IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Chromo Zones and the Nomadism of Colour1. Alchemy, Painting and Revolution in India, c.1750-18602. Supplement, Subaltern Art, Design and Dyeing in Britain and South Asia, c.1851-c.19053. Part 1: Still Dreaming of the Blue Flower? Race, Anthropology and the Colour SensePart 2: Creole Laboratory: Anthropology and Affect in the Torres Strait4.Swadeshi Colour Throughout the Philtre/Filter of Indian Nationalism, c.1905- c. 1947Postscript: Wiath and Rag and a KnifeNotes Index

'Eaton uses the topic of colour to create daring, provocative and dazzling new encounters with colonial and postcolonial cultural and material worlds. With a particular focus on South Asia, this book asks us to think about the interrelation of colour, art and empire in ways which explode any easy exoticisation of the imperial palette. The spectrum of ideas which Eaton uses to guide us through the labyrinthine entanglement of colour and colonialism is simply breathtaking.' Sarah Victoria Turner, Lecturer in History of Art, University of York, UK 'In this fascinating and highly readable book, Natasha Eaton gives us a brilliant analysis of colour as an aesthetic tool with which colonial spaces and bodies were negotiated, organised, displayed and resisted in India, by both Indian and European artists. Eaton unpacks the complexities of colour as a material substance, an intuitive expression, a sign of alterity and, as importantly, a paradigm of nationalist sensibility.' Romita Ray, Associate Professor of Art History, Syracuse University, USA 'These are richly hued and dazzling essays, simmering with insightful provocations. Eaton's antiquarian fascination and exceptional conceptual agility generate fabulous alignments and juxtapositions. The prism used here makes a world we had almost forgotten vital and compelling, drawing blurred margins through the "mind's indigo" and rendering them with acuity.' Christopher Pinney, Professor of Anthropology and Visual Culture, University College London, UK