A group of nine drawings for Illustrations of the Rock Cut Temples of India including Frontispiece, Khandagiri Hill, Cuttak; The Chaitya Cave, Ajanta (illustrated); Entrance to the Chaitya Cave, Ajanta; The Verandah of Vihara (illustrated); Exterior of Vihara on the Udaigiri Hill; Interior of Lanka; The Verandah of the Ganesa Gumpha; and Two studies of the pillars in the Great Chaitya Cave, Kannari

Dibdin started to exhibit in 1831, painting towns in France and Belgium, but also taking an early interest in the very different architecture of India. At the Royal Academy in 1837 he showed 'The Great Temple of Juggernaut, Bengal', a painting he had based on a sketch by Lieutenant Bacon of the Bengal Artillary.

This practice of utilising on-the-spot drawings made by others while in India was continued by Dibdin to the end of his career. Fascinated by the visual records of another culture that were being brought back to England, he was able to render in watercolour the unique structures and elaborate decoration of the great Hindu monuments. The present views were based on sketches by James Fergusson and are the product of a particularly fruitful artistic collaboration. They were published as a series of eighteen plates entitled Illustrations of the Rock Cut Temples of India, and accompanied by an explanatory letterpress which announces that Fergusson had made the drawings 'with the assistance of a camera-lucida, in the years 1838-9'.

Dibdin exhibited a Diorama of the Ganges in 1851, and went on to work with Fergusson on another publication, this time focussing on the architecture of Hindustan. His Guide to Water-Colour Painting was published in 1859.