Lot Essay
Udhuanala lies two miles to the south-east of Rajmahal, and the Daniells reached it on 9 October 1788. As with many of the sites visited on their northern tour, William Hodges had been there before them, in April 1781. The drawing which Hodges made of the bridge (now in the Paul Mellon Collection; see Stuebe, 1979, no.417) served as the basis for his aquatint, Select Views, no.24, published in February 1787. The Daniells had probably seen this aquatint in Calcutta before departing. In the published account of his Travels (1794), Hodges tells us that this bridge too, like the one in Rajmahal itself (see lot 3), had been built by Shah Shuja. In this case, however, the artists were probably attracted less by the bridge's architectural significance than by its historical associations: it had been the site in 1764 of a skirmish at which British forces under the command of a Major Adams had defeated troops under Mir Kasim. Hodges further records: that 'This victory was facilitated by an accident that happened on the bridge: the carriage of one of the enemy's large pieces of artillery broke down, and stopping the retreat, threw them into confusion' (Hodges, 1794, pp.20-1). Mir Kasim was the sometime Nawab of Bengal: installed as such by the British in 1760, he was deposed in 1763; his final defeat at the Battle of Buxar in October 1764 was an important factor leading to the British assumption of complete control over Bengal in the following year. The choice of the subject shows that the Daniells could be guided as much by political topicality as by picturesque beauty.