The art of opium: How the intoxicating drug and its trade captivated artists

In the 1850s, a British official posted in India described a most “extraordinary and wonderful” feat of agricultural production: the extraction of a liquid, from a plant grown in the Gangetic plains, that yielded the imperial treasury a “gross revenue of three million and a half pounds sterling” – nearly 281 million pounds today.

Captain Walter Stanhope Sherwill, a revenue surveyor in colonial Bengal and a member of the Royal Native Infantry, was describing the laborious process of manufacturing opium, a drug that, among other commodities, built the fortunes of the British empire. Sherwill laid out his fascination for in detail in his illustrated book, The Indian Opium: Its Mode of Preparation for the Chinese Market, based on his observations at the East India Company’s Patna factory.

It wasn’t just opium agents who were captivated by the drug. Artists of the time were equally fascinated by opium and its trade. By the mid-19th century, as the opium trade drew global scrutiny, art often turned to caricature, critiquing the continued financial dependence of the British on a harmful drug.

Scenes from a factory

The British began exporting Indian opium to China around 1780, after establishing a trading foothold in that kingdom. In 1796, China prohibited the import and consumption of the substance. But the ban was enforced weakly and the opium trade became increasingly lucrative – legally and through smuggling.

In 1798, opium imports to China stood at 4,200 chests, but by 1835, this figure had crossed 14,000. Opium addiction became widespread, exacerbating social and economic problems within the Chinese empire.

Each of Sherwill’s seven illustrations depicts in minute detail the operations at the Patna factory to produce and ship opium to China.

The “Examining Hall” was where crude opium, brought in earthen pans from the fertile Ganges Valley – especially near Patna and Benares – was assessed for quality. The opium was tested for consistency, by touch or by inserting a scoop to observe texture and quality.

Small samples were sent to a chemical testing room where each pan was labelled and numbered. Pure and consistent opium was sent to the mixing room, while adulterated or substandard batches were discarded, often thrown into the Ganga.

In the mixing room, the contents of the earthen pans were emptied into large vats and the opium was stirred until it transformed into a consistent paste. Once mixed, the opium paste was transferred to the balling room.

In the balling room, crude opium was shaped into balls. Each worker was provided with a set of tools – a small table and stool, a brass hemispherical cup for shaping – a measured quantity of opium, and a mix of opium and water known as “lewa”. Workers were also given poppy petals to encase the opium balls.

Each ball of opium had to match an exact weight standard, which was checked by boys who transported them to the scales. The process required remarkable precision and speed, with skilled workers producing over 100 balls of opium a day. The room was a hive of activity, employing 140 men and 150 boys.

The opium balls were then placed in earthenware cups in the drying room. Workers used sharp tools to puncture spots if gas, caused by fermentation, was forming. In the stacking room, the opium was stored before being packed for shipment to Calcutta and onward to China.

The opium was loaded onto boats, known as the “Opium Fleet”, which navigated the Ganga down to Calcutta. In this illustration, the fleet is sailing past “Monghyr Hills” – today known as Munger in Bihar.

The fleet was preceded by small canoes that measured water depth, cleared other vessels from the channel by playing drums and announced the priority passage of the “Company Bahadur’s” opium. Timber rafts, often floated down from Nepal, were repurposed into packing cases for the opium. Two river steamers bound for Allahabad are also depicted.

Hard labour

Like Sherwill, opium fascinated other Englishmen. William Simpson, a painter and lithographer who visited India four times in 25 years during the 19th century, drew a watercolor on opium cultivation in Malwa in present day western Madhya Pradesh. It shows a sprawling banyan tree and in its shade a woman harvesting opium. She is dressed in traditional attire of a blouse, skirt and a dupatta draped over her head.

On the left, a farmer tends to his oxen. This romantic portrayal of opium cultivation did not capture the labour-intensive process that the task was – something that is distinct in the artwork by an Indian painter.

A series of 19 paintings by Shiva Lal, dating from around 1857, are a detailed account of opium production at the Gulzarbagh factory in Patna, Bihar. These “company paintings” were commissioned by Dr DR Lyall to be displayed on the walls of the factory. Lyall, the deputy opium agent of the Patna Opium Agency, was killed on July 3, 1857, in Patna, a significant part of the Revolt of 1857.

Lal’s paintings are unlike those of his English counterparts. With seemingly infinite and towering factory buildings, roof-to-ceiling stacks of opium and diminutive Indian workers, Sherwill’s lithographs represent the scale of producing opium. But Lal’s paintings humanise the work involved.

Lal’s paintings bring to life the moment in Amitava Ghosh novel Sea of Poppies when the lead character Deeti enters an opium factory. Unlike the vastness depicted in Sherwill’s illustrations, Deeti finds the opposite: “a dim tunnel, lit only by a few small holes in the wall. The air inside was hot and fetid, like that of a closed kitchen, except that the smell was not of spices and oil, but of liquid opium, mixed with the dull stench of sweat – a reek so powerful that she had to pinch her nose to keep herself from gagging.”

Instead of the woman cultivating opium in Simpson’s watercolour or the worker-bee efficiency of Indian workers in Sherwill’s lithographs, Ghosh describes how “a host of dark, legless torsos was circling around and around, like some enslaved tribe of demons”.

Ghosh’s searing writing is an attempt at conveying the horror and arduous labour of the opium economy demanded: “[Deeti] discovered the secret of those circling torsos: they were bare-bodied men, sunk waist-deep in tanks of opium, tramping round and round to soften the sludge. Their eyes were vacant, glazed, and yet somehow they managed to keep moving, as slow as ants in honey, tramping, treading. When they could move no more, they sat on the edges of the tanks, stirring the dark ooze only with their feet. These seated men had more the look of ghouls than any living thing she had ever seen: their eyes glowed red in the dark and they appeared completely naked, their loincloths – if indeed they had any – being so steeped in the drug as to be indistinguishable from their skin.”

A moral problem

As the British opium trade expanded, The Illustrated London News in 1843 ran a detailed article on the drug. It focused on Turkish, Bengal and Malwa opium. Turkish opium, once the dominant form of the drug in trade, was traditionally shaped into flat cakes. Bengal opium, grown and produced by the East India Company along the Ganga, was prized for its taste by the Chinese. An illustration with the article showed sealed chests, marked with the East India Company’s emblem, ready for transport.

Malwa opium, which originated in the native states of India, differed from Bengal opium in its cultivation and shipment. The Malwa variety was packed in much larger chests, each containing 140 pounds of opium. Although the East India Company sought to control the opium trade, Malwa opium was often produced outside its monopoly, leading to smuggling and legal challenges – an illustration depicts a fleet smuggling opium.

The Illustrated London News also noted that the drug in its liquid form, which could be smoked, was “fast gaining ground” among the working classes in England’s manufacturing districts to “allay the pangs of hunger”. Referring to the problem of addiction, the article said mothers have been known to deprive their children of food to satisfy their “inordinate longing”. “Surely this subject is well worthy of the attention and investigation of the philanthropist, if not of the Legislature of the kingdom,” it says.

The mid-19th century brought increased scrutiny of the opium trade, particularly after the Opium Wars of 1839-’42 and 1856-’60 during which Britain forced China’s Qing rulers to legalise the import of opium. These wars underscored the stakes of the opium economy and its entanglement with imperial power.

However, they also amplified moral opposition to the trade, both in Britain and among reform-minded groups in India. Evangelicals, Quakers and missionaries criticised the British complicity in fostering addiction in China as well as its reliance on revenue derived from opium.

In 1893, the Royal Commission on Opium was tasked with examining the trade’s moral, economic and social implications. The Commission’s findings, however, reflected the entrenched priorities of the British administration, which viewed opium as an economic necessity rather than a moral failing.

It argued that abolishing the trade would destabilise the financial underpinnings of British India without reducing opium consumption globally, as domestic production in China would rise to meet demand. Indeed, the text accompanying Sherwill’s illustrations speak of 39,870 opium balls drying, with an estimated value of 119,610 pounds sterling in the balling room and 300,000 opium cakes in the stacking room, valued at 900,000 pounds sterling.

The Lancet issue of December 16, 1893, included testimonies that advocated for balancing morality, health and economic considerations. The hearings were adjourned on December 20, 1893, leaving the debate unresolved. Supporters, including Dr James Lyall of the Bengal Revenue Board, claimed that moderate opium use resulted in health and economic advantages, especially in “malarial regions”, highlighting its supposed limited association with crime.

Officials such as administrator Sir David Barbour and physician Dr Kailas Chunder Bose claimed that prohibition could lead to unrest, economic devastation and irreplaceable revenue loss, pegged at over £300 million by the Bengal Chamber of Commerce.

Punch magazine mocked these debates in 1891 with a caricature titled “The Garden of Sleep or, ‘Put That in Your Pipe and Smoke It!’”. The “Garden of Sleep” symbolised the poppy fields cultivated in India under British rule that had displaced traditional crops, like corn.

The caricature frames a dialogue between “Miss India”, a woman dressed in traditional attire and jewellery representing India, and John Bull, representing Britain. Miss India acknowledges eviction but wryly demands “compensation for disturbance”.

In the heart of fair Ind, which JOHN BULL hopes to keep,
Trade planted a Garden – a Garden of Sleep;
’Neath the hot Eastern sky – in the place of good corn –
It is there that the baneful white Poppy is born, –
Chinese Johnny's desire, lending dreams of delight,
Which are his when the poppy-juice cometh in sight.
Oh! the Mart hath no heart, and Trade laugheth to scorn
The plea of friend PEASE, where the Poppies are born.
In this Garden of Sleep, where white Poppies are spread,
Fair INDIA plucketh the opiate head.
JOHN BULL says. “My dear, PEASE's tales make me creep.
He swears it, fills graves with 'pigtails,' who seek sleep!”
Fair INDIA replies, “That may possibly be;
But they Revenue bring, some Six Millions, you see!
Turn me out if you will, smash the Trade if you must;
But – you'll make up the money somehow, Sir, I trust!”

The accompanying poem encapsulates Britain’s economic dependency on opium, generating substantial revenue while dismissing ethical concerns raised by reformers such as one “Mr Pease”. The imagery reflects the colonial exploitation of India to fuel China’s opium addiction, described as “dreams of delight” born from the poppy’s “baneful” juice.

Critics decry opium trade as filling “graves with ‘pigtails” – a reference to Chinese victims – John Bull justifies it by citing the six million pounds it brings to the treasury. Miss India’s retort underscores the moral and economic dilemma of dismantling the trade, suggesting that while prohibition might address ethical concerns, the British government would still need to replace the revenue it relies upon.

Copious volumes have been written on the scale and impact of opium cultivation and processing in colonial India but it is in the artistic and sarcastic depictions of the times that one encounters the controversial romance of colonialism with opium.

Sonal is Assistant Professor of History at Motilal Nehru College, University of Delhi. She specialises in the history of colonial India.