Calcutta, with St. Paul's Cathedral

Details

PHOTOGRAPHER UNKNOWN
Calcutta, with St. Paul's Cathedral
Half-plate daguerreotype. Circa early 1850s. Gilt-metal mount, partially sealed with Indian newspaper, plush-lined folding leather case, gilt clasps.

Provenance

Christie's South Kensington, 19th and 20th Century Photographs, 27 October 1977, lot 24;
The Paul F. Walter Collection;
Christie's, London, Visions of India, 5 June 1996, lot 211

Literature

Pal and Dehejia, From Merchants to Emperors, British Artists and India 1757-1930, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1986, p. 182, pl. no. 191.
See: Pal, Changing Visions, Lasting Images, Calcutta Through 300 Years, p. 145

Exhibited

New York, The Morgan Library and Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, From Merchants to Emperors, British Artists and India, 1757-1930, 1986-87.

Special notice

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Lot Essay

A fine panoramic view across the city, taken from a rooftop position with a grand classical villa in the foreground. A particularly clear, crisp image in which it is possible to see two Indian figures standing on the upper balcony of the villa, as well as the tower and spire of the distant cathedral which was completed in 1847. Surviving daguerreotype views of India are extremely rare. Thacker & Co. of Calcutta are recorded importing daguerreotype apparatus as early as January 1840, but it was not until 1852 that the first daguerreotype studio was established in Calcutta by J. W. Newland, who may have been the photographer responsible for this view. The earliest known photographic view of Calcutta was a daguerreotype of the San Souci Theatre in Park Street, taken circa 1840 and published as an engraving in 1842.

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