Lot Essay
Chinnery travelled to India in 1802 to pursue a career as a portrait painter. One client remarked, however, that 'He likes landscape painting a thousand to one better than portrait painting'. Chinnery moved from Madras to Calcutta in 1807 and made a large number of sketches in a variety of media between then and his leaving India for China in 1825, working in Calcutta and the surrounding area. He executed many sketches of Eastern Bengal, concentrating on rural scenes of villagers with their animals, and often portrayed the more humble side to Indian life in contrast to the lives of his English patrons.