M. M. Bhownaggree, a Parsee from Bombay, was elected as Conservative MP for Bethnal Green in 1895 (defeating George Howell). He was the second Indian to be elected to Parliament, and the first Tory. Bhownaggree retained his seat in the next General Election of 1900, but lost his seat in 1906. Seen by many as a Conservative tool to counteract the influence of Dadabhai Naoroji and the Indian Parliamentary Party, Bhownaggree did endeavour to bring Indian issues to the fore in the House of Commons, in particular the treatment of Indians in South Africa. Despite his concerns about Indians in South Africa, Bhownaggree supported the Boer War and was seen as a supporter of British Imperialism.

Bhownaggree arrived in Britain in 1882, with an allowance from the Maharaja of Bhavanagar to study law. He was called to the Bar in 1885 and was one of the Commissioners of the Indian and Colonial Exhibition at South Kensington in 1886. Bhownaggree donated money towards the Imperial Institute in South Kensington and a window to St Lukes, Redcliffe Square, in memory of his sister. He founded a training home for nurses, a public gymnasium in London and donated money to many other local associations. In 1897, Bhownaggree was promoted to Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire (KCIE).

He died in London in 1933, aged 82.

Augustus John was widely known as the archetypal bohemian artist at the beginning of the twentieth century. He left the quiet seaside town of Tenby in 1894 to attend the Slade School of Fine Art in London, followed the next year by his sister, the artist Gwen John. After an accident in 1895, he cultivated a ‘wild’ persona and established his place within the progressive cultural circles of fin-de-siècle London. As well as being a radical student, he was also a prolific one, and his art was widely admired by his contemporaries. He married Ida Margaret Nettleship, a fellow Slade student, on 24 January 1901, and they went to live in Liverpool where John was employed in an art school affiliated to University College, London.

It was during this period that John became acquainted with the Gypsy scholar, John Sampson. Nomadic life on the open road was to become something of a fascination to John, and he took his family retinue (which included his wife, his mistress Dorothy McNeill, known to the family as Dorelia, and all their children) on various trips in a Romany caravan. On moving back to London, John established himself as a central figure in the progressive faction of the London art world, opening the Chelsea Art School with William Orpen (1903-7). He was also an enthusiastic member of the New English Art Club. John was very close to William Rothenstein and his wife, Alice. John is the male figure in Rothenstein’s enigmatic The Doll’s House (1899-1900). Rothenstein praised John’s work highly, going as far as to call him a ‘genius’ in his autobiography, Men and Memories (vol. 1, p. 3). It was most probably through his friendship with Rothenstein that John became a member of the India Society. He is listed as a member from the outset of the Society in The India Society: Report for the year ending December 31, 1911 (London: Chiswick Press, 1912). John did not publish his opinions on Indian art but must have been acquainted with it through his connections with Rothenstein and the India Society. In 1908, he worked on a canvas entitled Nirvana (sketches are in the Tate Collection; presented by William Rothenstein in 1917) which might suggest a closer personal interest in eastern spiritual ideas. This was exhibited at the ‘Twenty Years of British Art, 1890-1910’ exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1910.

From 1920, John travelled through Europe, Jamaica and the US in a bid to revive his reputation which had rapidly declined after the war. In the 1930s and 1940s, he knew the Ceylonese M. J. Tambimuttu and contributed a portrait of the poet and editor to his Out of this War (1941). In September of 1961, a seriously-ill John went to London to take part in a demonstration against nuclear weapons. He died a few weeks later at home in Hertfordshire.

Jamini Roy was a prolific painter of the twentieth century. His work is widely collected both in India and abroad. At the age of 16, he was sent to the Government Art School in Calcutta, receiving his Diploma in 1908. He was later to reject his formal, academic training as well as the style of the Bengali 'revivalist' movement and one of his teachers, Abanindranath Tagore. Instead, he took inspiration from indigenous Indian art, often described as 'folk' art. He was particularly drawn to Kalighat art and the Santhal people, often depicting Santhal dancers and drummers in his characteristic 'flat' style using a restricted palette of earthy colours. He experimented with techniques and materials, such as tempera, card, rush-matting and natural pigments. His obituary in The Times noted: ‘His studio was a place of pilgrimage for all interested in the artistic heritage of Bengal and in his own delightful person he typified a generation and a culture' (15/05/72).

The poet and editor M. J. Tambimuttu became interested in Roy's work in the mid-1940s. In correspondence, he expressed an interest in commissioning a monograph on Roy for his Editions Poetry London list, as well as in arranging an exhibition of his work in England (correspondence with Kurt Larisch, Tambimuttu archive, British Library). Roy's work was exhibited in London in 1947 (Burlington House) and in New York in 1953. He was awarded the Padma Bushan by the Indian Government in 1955. Roy was supported, collected and written about by William Archer, the Keeper of the Indian Section at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and also by Archer’s successor, John Conran Irwin. Irwin collaborated with the progressive poet Bishnu Dey to write the first biography of Roy. Irwin was also the executive secretary of the important exhibition at Burlington House, ‘The Arts of India and Pakistan’, in the winter of 1947-8, in which Roy’s work was included. William Archer made Roy’s work central to his book India and Modern Art (1959).