Accompanying him was another intrepid explorer Alexander Burnes of Scotland.
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| The Kuzzelbash of Kabul, Watercolour, Afghanistan, 1836, Pencil, pen and ink, and watercolour, Victoria and Albert Museum |
"Vigne got himself out of tight spots by drawing pictures, usually for alarmed villagers or angry chieftains, who would swing from 'fury to a chuckle' on seeing their faces rendered in watercolour. 'I put them in good humor by scratching off two or three caricature portraits, and distributing a little medicine.' As war brewed, Vigne escaped unnoticed; the flamboyant Burnes was later cut to pieces by an angry mob."
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Quote from "Explorer's Sketchbooks: The Art of Discovery and Adventure," 1986.
Godfrey T. Vigne on Wikipedia
4 comments:
That's very interesting...and terrifying!
Oh dear...caricatures? I am really hesitant to say this - yet I think I gotta: colonialism stinks.
Susan, I think the sketches he's talking about were from about 5 years before the Anglo-Afghan war started in 1839, so I think he was doing these sketches more as a vulnerable pioneering traveler rather than an overbearing colonialist. "Caricature" here I take to means a sketch that captures the main features simply, more trenchant than insulting.
OK, learning new things can be a pain, and yet can be fun. I did go back and do some reading this evening about Afghanistan...and what they called The Great Game - where, starting in 1830, the Russian Empire and the British Empire were battling to take over control in Afghanistan. So I guess that Godfrey Vigne was, then not a colonialist since the region was not completely controlled by the British forces?
That term, colonialism, I should not have used. I am not sure what other term to substitute, since I still think his approach sounded patronizing - and I am also still worried about that word, caricature. The idea of a caricature not being an exaggeration, but trenchant, is that a modern usage?
I once took a caricature class and it wound up making me uncomfortable - it doesn't seem nice to make fun of people for the way they look...something people are just simply born with. I thought the word caricature just meant "exaggerated." Not like the word "cartoon" which I know has two major meanings.
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