LIEUT. COLONEL HENRY DIXON

TOPOGRAPHICAL PHOTOGRAPHS PROPERTY FROM THE HISTORICAL ARCHIVES OF BOWOOD HOUSE The photographs in the following nineteen lots were acquired by Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, fifth Marquis of Lansdowne (1845-1927), who inherited the title in 1866. He married Lady Maud Hamilton in 1869. Lord Lansdowne worked as Under-Secretary for India in Gladstone's government in 1880 and was appointed Viceroy of India in 1888, a post which he held until 1894. His tenure of this post coincided with a period of relative stability in the country and Lord and Lady Lansdowne proved popular with both the British and Indian administrations. In 1895 he was appointed Secretary of State for War in Lord Salisbury's government and he served as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from 1900-1905.

Details

LIEUT. COLONEL HENRY DIXON

'Views in Mysore', circa 1868-69

Album containing 129 albumen prints, including two two-part panoramas, 12¾ x 18¾ in. and 9¼ x 20 5/8 in., seventy-five 3 x 2 in. to 11¼ x 4 in., the remainder approx. 8½ x 11¼ in. or the reverse, all but one with arched tops, thirty-nine initialled H.D. and thirty-six numbered in the negatives, variously mounted, eleven mounts trimmed, occasional pencil inscriptions on mounts, the majority with printed paper title labels with photographer's credit Photographed by Lieut.-Colonel H. Dixon, Madras Infantry, for the Government of Mysore, seven page leaflet titled Art and Industry Fine Arts bound-in, half black leather, titled in gilt on leather panel on front cover, oblong folio.

Literature

Dewan, J., Delineating Antiquities and Remarkable Tribes. Photography for the Bombay and Madras Governments 1855-70 in History of Photography, Vol. 16, no. 4, Winter 1992, pp. 311-317

Lot Essay

Henry Dixon, of the 22nd. Madras Infantry, applied for government funding for a series of photographs of the architectural antiquities of Mysore which he was making in 1868 and 1869. The government had recently given responsibility for the documentation of such sites directly to the individual Presidencies in order to continue the comprehensive recording of India's antiquities which had begun in 1854 when Capt. Thomas Biggs was appointed as Government Photographer to the Bombay Presidency. Photographs from Dixon's series were added to the collection of the India Office in early 1870.

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