The exhibition of decorative and industrial arts that was held in Jaipur in 1883 under the patronage of Maharaja Sawai Madho Singh II (1880–1922) brought together the work of artists and craftsmen from many regions of India, but gave special treatment to the neighbouring states of Rajasthan, and to the pupils of Jaipur's own recently established School of Art. It led to the establishment of a permanent museum of industrial arts in Jaipur, which still exists and continues to hold many of the original exhibits. One of many ambitious exhibitions that followed in the wake of the Great Exhibition of 1851, the Jaipur Exhibition was the first such to be held in an Indian state, coinciding with the International Exhibition in Calcutta and preceding the Indian and Colonial Exhibition in London of 1886.

Being a contribution to debates on the role of visual arts in asserting the European power in India, the book by Giles Tillotson takes as a ground for exploration the representation of Indian scenery and architecture by British artists in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, focusing primarily on William Hodges (1744-97) who was the first professional English landscape painter to visit India. The subject chosen for discussion is quite well documented, however, the interpretation presented by Tillotson comes out with simplistic freshness, which arises from an attempt to match the approaches of art-historians and critics of post-colonial cultural theory. The theoretical argument with regard to reconciliation of these approaches, advocating stylistic or ideological alignments respectively, runs mainly for consideration of the process by which works of art are produced. It is to reconsider works of art in relation with the historical events and ideas that recent post-colonial cultural theory seems to be inclined to ignore.The primary purpose of the study is to propose an answer to the question of a possible application to visual arts of recent theories of Orientalism. For this purpose author deliberately concentrates on the works of a single artist by examining them in the contexts of aesthetics and intellectual history. The motive of the art historian to take up the topic from the eighteenth century art history is clearly delineated and pertains inter alia to the changes within the very discipline over the recent decades: the lingering dominance of formalism in art analysis of the early 80s of the last century after the challenging criticism was changed by exploration of the ideological basis of art (p. 112). The art of the eighteenth century played a crucial role in this project, therefore it was particularly these attitudes towards merely identifying art with ideology that based the analysis of Orientalist constructions in art over the last decades of the 20 th century.These theoretical shifts are pertinent to Tillotson's position regarding picturesque aesthetics of which William Hodges was one of the representatives. Methodologically, however, it is a mediating force of the process of production, which is emphasised throughout the book in order to balance the feasibility of encounter and the artifact in the analysis of art. For the purpose, Tillotson deals extensively with both Hodges's paintings and prints, part of the latter published as Select Views in India (1785-88), and his publications which include A Dissertation on the Prototypes of Architecture: Hindoo, Moorish and Gothic (1787) and a narrative of his travels and observations entitled Travels in India (1793), as well as with the writings of English aesthetic theorists of the time. A comparative approach also seeks to relate the work of Hodges to contemporary theory and practice of picturesque aesthetics, which is the chief subject

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