Tate has received a gift of 50 works charting artistic life in India during the 18th and 19th centuries, donated by the British art historian Charles Greig. The collection brings together Indian artists such as Sita Ram and Ghulam Ali Khan with European painters including Johan Zoffany and Rudolf Swoboda, alongside British names like Thomas Daniell and William Daniell.

Tate says the works illuminate a period of profound cultural, social and political change driven by British colonialism in South Asia. Among the highlights are three watercolours by Sita Ram, a key figure in the tradition of Company painting, watercolours made in a European manner for foreign patrons. Greig describes the collection as his life's main passion, assembled over decades, and himself as only ever a temporary steward of pictures made in a vanished world before photography.

The gift fills a gap in Tate's holdings, a spokesperson explained, noting that the institution already owns a small number of related works, including Zoffany's painting of a cockfight and Indian landscapes by the Daniells and William Hodges. Greig recently appeared on the television programme Fake or Fortune?, assessing a portrait of an Indian woman by the 18th-century Scottish artist Katherine Read.

A free display drawn from the Greig collection is scheduled to open at Tate Britain in 2028, giving the public its first chance to see the group together. The donation adds a substantial body of Anglo-Indian material to a national collection, offering a visual record of South Asia from about 1770 onwards through the eyes of artists working there at the time.