Portrait of Maharaja Mangal Singh Bahadur (b. 1859), three-quarter-length, in an interior

Photography reached India in the 1840s and was initially unpopular amongst painters, and many chose to ignore it. However, it began to gain importance as a documentary and artistic medium, and popularity swung in its favour. The present work comes from the transitional period of either copying photographs, or painting directly over them.

We are grateful to Dr. Pramod Khumar for his assistance with the cataloguing of this lot.