BY A BRITISH ARTIST, DELHI, NORTH INDIA, BETWEEN 1803 AND 1828

The Qutb Minar is one of Delhi’s most iconic landmarks. Its foundation was laid by Qutb al-Din Aibak in 1199 but the upper storeys were added by his successor Iltutmish. It was used as a minaret for the nearby mosque Quwwat al-Islam. The 1803 earthquake shattered the very top and the present watercolour shows the minaret after the event with the remains of the broken finial. In the 1820s, Lord Amherst (Governor-General 1823-28) ordered works on the site to be carried out and in 1822 appointed Colonel Robert Smith, a well-respected engineer, to direct the restoration. Smith designed a cupola which was added to the minaret in 1828 to replace the damaged original. However his addition was unpopular, widely ‘ridiculed’ and described as ‘a Chinese umbrella’ and was taken down in 1847 (Holger Hoock, Empires of the Imagination: Politics, War and the Arts in the British World, 1750-1850, 2010. p.399). Therefore it is very likely that this watercolour was painted after the earthquake of 1803 and before Smith’s restoration of 1828.