Lot Essay
It is difficult to locate this scene precisely today, since the large ruin on the left has disappeared. In the background is one of the outer gates of one of the Jaunpur mosques. The inscriptions seem to offer contradictory evidence. The reference on the mount to 'The Great Mosque' implies that it is the town's principal or Jami Mosque, which was built over a long period between 1433 and 1478, mainly by Sultan Hasan Sharqi. William's journal records that the Daniells sketched there on 6 December 1789 (and an interior view of the Jami Masjid is the subject of the aquatint Oriental Scenery, vol.III, no.9), but the inscription on the reverse suggests that this is another view of the Atala Masjid (see lot 35), and this seems more likely. It is clear that the Daniells particularly admired the Atala Masjid, and so could have called it 'the great mosque'; and the journal, as quoted above, shows that they spent at least two days there and that, on 2 December, 'Un[cle Thomas] made a sketch of the East Gate'.