A distant View of Pateta Fort, with the River and a Hindu Shrine in the Foreground, Pateta, Uttar Pradesh

Pateta (or Pattihata) is a fort close to Chunar (see lot 24), up river from Benares. Like Bijaigarh (see lots 30, 31, 32, 33), Pateta is distinguished principally as one of the forts used by Raja Chait Singh of Benares during his struggle against Warren Hastings in 1781. Attempting to arrest the Raja in Benares, the Governor General and his party had met with greater resistance than they were ready for and were forced to effect a rapid and undignified retreat to Chunar. The Raja's forces were then stationed at the nearby forts of Pateta and Bijaigarh, from which they were eventually flushed by British reinforcements. As a member of Hastings' retinue, William Hodges had been caught up in these alarming events, and made a number of pictures of the forts involved. By doing so he put them on the artistic itinerary: Pateta was no longer so topical by the time the Daniells reached it, on 4 January 1790 (though it would still have been of interest to an English audience) and in going there they were probably motivated in part by their unwillingness to leave undone anything that Hodges had done.