Devare & Co
Gopinath Devare, Indian photographer
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Devare & Co,Portrait of Maharani of Pratapgarh
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Gopinath Devare was a prominent Indian studio and court photographer operating in Bombay (now Mumbai) during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best remembered as the founder of Devare & Co., a premier photographic studio that captured the changing social landscape of colonial India, bridging the gap between royal portraiture and early commercial photography.
Operating out of Bombay, Gopinath Devare established himself as a highly sought-after court photographer to Indian royalty and the elite class. Devare & Co. specialized in sophisticated studio portraits, capturing maharajas, royal families, and prominent citizens. Notably, his studio produced highly regarded portraits of figures such as Prince Yeshwant Rao Holkar of Indore and his sister, Princess Manorama Raje.
His work often blended classic European studio lighting and staging techniques with indigenous aesthetic sensibilities, sometimes utilizing gelatin silver prints subtly enhanced with watercolors and gold gilding.
Devare’s legacy extends significantly into the foundation of early Indian cinema through his family line. His studio served as a training ground and springboard for the next generation of visual artists who transitioned from stills to the moving image:
Narayan Gopinath Devare (N.G. Devare): Gopinath’s son studied photography and cinematography in Europe before returning to India in 1921. He worked briefly in his father's studio before becoming a pioneering cinematographer and director of India's silent film era (collaborating with early studios like Kohinoor).
Gajanan Shyamrao Devare (G.S. Devare): Gopinath's nephew also leveraged the family photographic background to become a prominent early cameraman and director, working alongside figures like J.B.H. Wadia.
Gopinath Devare belongs to the foundational era of homegrown Indian photographers—alongside figures like Lala Deen Dayal—who took over a medium initially dominated by British colonial photographers. Today, surviving archival prints stamped by Devare & Co. are held in prominent institutional collections, including the National Gallery of Australia (NGA), and are highly valued by historians researching early South Asian modernism and royal portraiture.
Gael Newton small essay: Devare & Co, Prince Yeshwant Rao Holkar and his sister Manorama Raje
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