Artist and Empire

On the British Empire, as we know, the sun never set. But eventually it did, whereupon works of art, heroic or otherwise, associated with it were shoved away in vaults or dusty corners of provincial museums and forgotten about. This exhibition is an ambitious attempt to haul the artistic legacy of the British Empire into the light of day and see how it looks now.

The show moves from maps (cartography was a tool of empire from the 17th century) to the sometimes angry condemnation of contemporary ‘Commonwealth’ artists – Our Bones In Your Collections by the Indigenous Australian artist, Judy Watson: the title speaks for itself. The maps, including one with a patriotic border (Britannia dominant) by Walter Crane, might suggest the origins of the whole thing in the technological superiority of the British. Being able to make a map of a territory was half-way to laying claim to it.

By the 19th century this had become a moral and religious superiority. In The Secret Of England’s Greatness by Thomas Jones Barker (c. 1863), Queen Victoria presents a Bible to an ambassador from East Africa who bows before her in gratitude. This painting is hard to take seriously today. But other Victorian manifestations of colonisation – Eastward Ho!, Home Again, The Remnants Of An Army and The Last Stand Of The 44th Foot At Gundamuck, all once hugely famous – now seem powerfully to convey a sad sense of empire as conflict, deprivation and suffering.

The 18th-century works stand out and are a revelation. They are less stridently about the great imperial mission, because it hadn’t really begun. George Stubbs is not well known for exotic animals, but his largescale depiction of the cheetah ‘Miss Jenny’ with her Indian handlers is precisely that – a study of the exotic. Sir Joshua Reynolds’s brilliant and not entirely flattering portrait of Captain John Foote in Indian garb reflects an uncomfortable culture clash.

Empire-builders, particularly in India, valued indigenous art and encouraged the crossover of artistic traditions, resulting in wonderfully vivid bird and plant pictures. Even so by the end of the exhibition, the nature of empire is still a mystery. All that can be said with certainty is that while it was going on no artists condemned it. Some of the most powerful works are where the artist has forgotten about it and just got on with the job – as with the wonderful portrait by Philip de László of two Indian cavalry officers.

Until 10 April 2016 at Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1: 020-7887 8888, www.tate.org.uk