In the Wellcome Collection I

In the Wellcome Collection I found a little-known set of trade portraits painted around 1840 by an unnamed artist from Tanjore, in present-day Tamil Nadu. Each plate shows a working man and “his wife” on a flat yellow ground under a cloudy sky, with long brushy shadows and a line of palms on the horizon. I built a Recraft Style from these plates and sent the same painter to record eight professions of Madras in 2026: an EV cab driver, a cardiologist, an architect, a grooming-studio owner, a millet-café founder, fashion designers, pastry chefs and laundry founders. The poses and staging echo the originals, but the roles have moved on... Three are shown here; the full series of eight is in the Recraft project, and the video brings all of them to life to a mridangam score.