Lot Essay
The second Mughal Emperor, Humayun (1530-56), laid the foundations of the fort now known as the Purana Qila, as a new citadel of Delhi, supposedly on the site of the ancient Indraprastha. Its construction was completed by the usurper Sher Shah Sur in the 1540s, but Humayun recaptured Delhi in 1555 and died in the fort in the following year. The sandstone wall is over a mile in length, and is punctuated by three gates: the one shown here, on the western side, and two others to the north and south, the River Jumna lying to the east. Opposite the west gate, on the other side of the modern Mathura road, stands the ruin of a gateway built by Sher Shah; the Daniells have employed some artistic licence in their rendering of this to create a picturesque foreground, but the fort gate itself, by contrast, appears exactly as it does today. The Daniells visited Delhi between 16 February and 6 March 1789: as political troubles had prevented Hodges going there, they were the first British landscape painters to draw its monuments.