Storm on the Ganges, or Mrs. Hastings near the Rocks of Colgong

William Hodges spent three years making drawings and watercolors in India, which then served as the basis for the paintings and drawings executed when he returned to Britain. Here he depicted the near-shipwreck of Marian Hastings, wife of Warren Hastings, Governor General of Bengal, as she trav­eled to reach her husband’s sickbed in Calcutta. In this imagining of the scene, which Hodges did not witness (and which was painted after his return to London), Marian is hidden by the boat’s canopy; the muscular Indian boatmen stand as idealized figures of exotic beauty and salvation. Hodges saw and repre­sented the landscape and people of India through the lens of European aesthetic categories, both exoticism and the sublime.