It was with an acute sense of civic pride and nationalist fervour that the illustrious brothers Sir Dorab Tata and Sir Ratan Tata, remarkable scions of India's pioneering industrialist Jamsetji Tata, bequeathed their extensive art collections to the Prince of Wales Museum of Western India, now the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai. This unmatched instance of munificence to a public museum in India had the selfless support of their spouses, Lady Meherbai and Lady Navajbai. The Tata bequest formed the core of the Museum's collection.
This volume is the first comprehensive publication on the Tata Collection in the Museum. A selection of 151 prized pieces from the collection, extending in provenance from the Indian subcontinent to Japan and China in the east, and to England and Europe in the west, is presented here along with introductions and descriptions by specialists in each field. Though not much archival material is available, the writers have painstakingly put together a history of the two brothers' collecting activities.
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