In the book, Glass Paintings : An Ephemeral Art in India, the author has recorded the hitherto unpublished glass paintings found in the collection of the Bharat Itihas Samshodhak Mandal of Pune. These paintings represent a novel technique; these are done in oil rather than in water as was the earlier practice. The choice of the themes is also a departure from the traditional ones. They consist mainly of portraits representing an exotic fashion which also attempts to bring out the personality of the subject. This is a pioneering effort by the author to study an important but rather unknown aspect of the culture of the nineteenth century in western India.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Samita Gupta
Dr. Samita Gupta was educated at Loreto House, Calcutta, and specialized in Modern History at Calcutta University. She was awarded the Ph.D. degree in 1983 by the University of Poona on her work on Colonial Architecture for which she traveled to England on a Visitorship awarded by the British Council. Deeply interested in art and architecture, she has traveled extensively in India and in Europe. She has contributed book reviews and research articles to various national and international journals and writes regularly for the daily writes regularly for the daily Press. She is the Author of a book titled Architecture and the Raj: Western Deccan 1700-1900, (1985). She has taken part in many seminars, and is an experienced lecturer having taught for the last twenty-five years in various colleges in the country. At present she is Head of the Department of History in Nowrosjee Wadia College, Pune., Dr. Gupta is also an urban historian and involved with the heritage conservation movement.
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