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INTRODUCTION British artists have been attracted by the exoticism of India since the 18th century. In 1783, the East India Company commissioned Col. Colin Mackenzie to survey southern India, and so began complementary activities recording the architecture, topography and to a lesser extent, the anthropology of various regions. In 1815 Mackenzie was appointed to the newly-created post of Surveyor-General of India. The pattern of commissioning military personnel to work on Government-sponsored projects was well-established by the time the first camera arrived in India in the early 1840s. So, too, was the sale of topographical drawings and prints by artists such as the Daniells, representing India at its most picturesque. This vast country was ripe for the introduction of photography. The reign of Queen Victoria saw the emergence of a previously unknown level of activity researching and documenting all things Indian. Cadets at the Addiscombe college of the East India Company were able to learn the basics of photography from 1855, and on arrival in India some were armed with cumbersome wooden cameras and sent to work. It was military personnel, well represented here by Linnaeus Tripe, John Murray, Eugene Impey, Edmund Lyon, Melville Clarke, Andrew Neill, Thomas Biggs and William Pigou, who contributed some of the most outstanding early architectural photographs in the 1850s and 1860s. Many of these were used to illustrate books published by the Archaeological Survey of India, during the 1860s and later. (see lots 83 and 89) One of the most colourful of these military photographers was Robert Gill, who effectively lived as a hermit while documenting the Ajanta Caves over a period of many years. (see lot 88) Ethnographic photography also flourished during this early period. As with the archeological surveys, there was a great sense of discovery combined with a knowledge that increased communications and accessibility would initiate future changes for even the most remote sites and tribes and their current state should be preserved in photographs wherever possible. The monumental work, The People of India (see lot 6), with over 450 portrait photographs was the most ambitious and encyclopaedic work of this kind. William Johnson's rare three-volume work, Photographs of Western India, includes eighty-six exceptional ethnographic studies alongside a series of over two hundred fine topographical views. (see lot 91) Several others, notably Felice Beato, Oscar Mallitte (see lot 64) and Eugene Impey (see lot 78) also excelled at combining architectural and ethnographic or portrait photography. Such versatility remains uncommon today, and would have proved a real test of any photographer's skills in the middle of the 19th century. Felice Beato was drawn to the sites of wars and battles, and arrived in India shortly after the rebellion against British rule in 1857, known as the Indian Revolt or Indian Mutiny. He was a professional photographer, who had already gained experience working with the British forces in the Crimea. In his portraits of senior British officers and generals he penetrates well beyond the expected formality to show real men rather than retouched heroes. These men, including their generals, can appear not only unusually informal in Beato's portraits, but also tired and disheveled, giving a hint of the reality of military life. (see lot 2) The commercial photographer, John Burke, also specialised in military subjects, specifically the British wars with Afghanistan along the North-West Frontier in the late 1870s. Burke's artfully composed portrait groups and panoramic landscape show the places and personnel associated with what must have been a dangerous region at a precarious time. (see lots 42-43) The first of the British commercial photographers to establish a highly successful venture in India was Samuel Bourne, who arrived in 1863. Bourne literally followed in the footsteps of the artists of the 18th century, to produce an extensive catalogue of views from all over India. He exhibited in India and in Britain and received many awards (see lot 123). His breathtaking Himalayan scenes, picturesque landscape and fine architectural work have never been better represented than in three important albums, which together form one of the highlights of this collection. (lots 53-55) It is thought that these were Bourne's own albums and this direct link with the photographer or with the person who first owned the photographs is one that crops up often in this collection. At every opportunity Mr. Gujral has acquired works with a provenance that provides this link with the object's past. The ephemeral nature of photography and the lack of attention devoted to it during the first half of the 20th century, have meant that a large proportion of 19th century photographs have been lost, damaged or destroyed. Where they do exist outside of long-standing institutional collections it is common for their history to have become dislocated along the way. The Gujral Collection includes albums which were compiled for the 8th and 9th Earls of Elgin and the 5th Marquis of Lansdowne, each of whom was at one time Viceroy of India. Other items represent the personal mementos of Sir Lepel Griffin, Agent to the Governor-General in Central India and of Sir William Russell, who was active in the 7th Hussars during the Indian Revolt. Photographers whose works can be traced back to their own personal archives include Dr. John Murray and Capt. Eugene Impey. One of the most fascinating of all 19th century photographers in India must be Lala Deen Dayal. Deen Dayal was the most successful Indian photographer of the period. He was based in Hyderabad and started photographing in the 1870s after an earlier career as a draughtsman. He became a professional photographer during the 1880s and was appointed Official Photographer to the Nizam of Hyderabad from 1884. In this role he had access to the extravagant palaces of one of the richest men in India and access which was not often available to his European competitors. He frequently documented the visits of important diplomats in formal and occasionally, informal settings. The work he produced, probably as a private commission, for Sir Lepel Griffin provides a real insight into the British way of life during the Raj. (see lot 90) Kanwardip Gujral is an Indian businessman, living in Hamburg, who maintains close business and family ties with India. He was born into a Sikh family, near Lahore, when India was still under British rule, and was a child of twelve at the time of India's independence and partition. He and his family were on holiday in the Himalayas when independence was declared and as their former home was now in Pakistan, they were unable to return. They moved to Agra and Kanwardip was enrolled in a British school, where, for a short time he was the only Indian pupil. Gradually the school expanded to accept more Indian students and everything proceeded as usual with the school maintaining an all-British staff for many years. It was during this period that his interest in Europe and especially Britain developed, and particularly an interest in the history of India under British rule. Mr. Gujral came to Britain as an engineering student in 1953 and moved to Germany in 1956, where he established a business in 1976. This was also the year in which he actively began to collect, first Indian miniature paintings, then Pichhavai paintings on cloth and eventually, photographs. He remembers buying his first photographs, of Delhi, in 1976. These lay dormant until 1990 when, during a holiday in Italy, he discovered and acquired a substantial set of late 19th century world travel albums which included views from an extensive tour of India. These sparked a renewed enthusiasm and from then he devoted his collecting instincts to photography, most actively over the next six years. His passion for photographs seems undiminished, but in recent years he acknowledges that, although his wife, Ingrid, shares the same love of collecting, her preference is for vintage cars rather than for 19th century photographs. Nor have his children inherited the same fascination. He has therefore decided the time has now come to allow others who do have similar interests to appreciate and enjoy these photographs which reveal so much of 19th century India. The task of cataloguing such a collection is a challenge, particularly when it comes to identifying place names and the names of individuals, many of which were written in various different ways at the time. Commonly used 19th century names have been maintained in the catalogue with their modern equivalents added where these are substantially different. Where titles have been transcribed direct from photographs or their mounts the spellings have been left as in the original. Christie's would like to acknowledge and thank the following individuals and institutions for their help in supplying information: Janet Dewan; John Falconer, Oriental & India Office Collections, British Library; Ken Jacobson; Pamela Roberts, Curator, Royal Photographic Society; and Clark Worswick. PORTRAIT, MILITARY AND MIXED TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHS

Attributed to HENRY PYBUS

Group portrait of servants of W. S. Brown, Bombay

Details

Attributed to HENRY PYBUS
Group portrait of servants of W. S. Brown, Bombay
Daguerreotype. Circa 1845. Card mount, paper-taped, annotated Servants of W.S. Brown, Taken 1845 by an artist named Pybus in Bombay in pencil in a later hand on the reverse of the paper tape.
4 x 5 in. (10 x 12.6 cm.)

Literature

See: Hambourg, Apraxine et al, The Waking Dream Photography's First Century The Gilman Paper Company Collection, p. 112, pl. 82 and pp. 302-3, no. 100 for another example

Special notice

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Lot Essay

W. S. (Seton) Brown was a partner in the firm Birley Worthington & Co., and was transferred from India to Shanghai, China in 1850. In the 1840s, the Girgaum district painter of Bombay was a miniature painter named Henry Pybus, possibly the photographer of this unusual image. The daguerreotype process was the first photographic process introduced to India, shortly after the announcement of the invention of photography in 1839. Unlike photographic prints on paper, which may be multiples from one negative, the daguerreotype has no negative and each example is therefore a unique image. Few portraits of Indians are known from this early period and group portraits are extremely uncommon. Another example can be seen in the collection of the Gilman Paper Company.

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