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Contents: Foreword. Prologue. Acknowledgement. 1. A historical background. 2. Details of art works with illustration. 3. Select bibliography. 4. Name of the Artist (Alphabetically) and Title of the Painting.

The Asiatic Society welcomes you to the wonderful world of collections of oil paintings, 78 in number as per the Accession Register, which are rich and varied in content. Most of them are received as gifts, except a few which were commissioned to renowned artists having the tradition of western style of oil painting usually from Royal Academy of Arts, London.

The Asiatic Society was conceived by Sir William Jones in the year 1784. Gradually the art object and antiquity were collected from different sources and institutions. Out of 78 oil paintings 25 works were done by Robert Home alone and the rest were done by others. Portrait painting is a specialized branch of work of art and quite a few of them have acclaimed the highest achievements of unsurpassable aesthetic quality in the field of visual art through the ages. Among them Sir George Joshua Reynold, Tilly Kettle, Guido, Rubens, Arthur Devis, George Moreland, George Beechy, George Chinnery, F R. Say, Francis Grant, Domeni Chino, Daniell, Krum Holtz, T B Lawrence, J E Limeratw, Atul Bose (Indian origin) are specially to be mentioned.

Individually or collectively these will communicate the story of power, grandeur, leisure, land and people, etc. to the readers.