The bridge over the River Barna at Benares

Robert Smith was in India from 1805-30, in the Bengal Engineers. In 1810 he was Field Engineer with the Bengal Division and, after taking part in the capture of Mauritius in 1810-11, he became A.D.C. to Sir George Nugent, the Commander-in-Chief in India. During 1814-16 he was Field Engineer with a force engaged in the Nepal War. Although clearly neither contemporary nor accurate topographically, the inscription on the back of this drawing deserves to be taken seriously. Smith was still quite young in 1810, and the quality of this drawing compared with those known to have been done in 1814 on his way up from Calcutta to the theatre of war against Nepal such as his view of Rohtasgarh (see Christie's, 24 Sept. 2003, from the collection of William and Mildred Archer, lot 26) suggests that he was still developing his skills. This drawing of the bridge over the River Barna, Benares, is known in two other versions. One, almost identical, in the British Library (WD2428, see M. Archer, British Drawings in the India Office Library, London, 1969, pp.260-61), has hitherto been given to Charles George Nicholls (fl.1792-1818) on the basis of the third version. This version occurs in an album of this artist's small drawings based on his own and other artists' work which was completed in England in 1818, entitled Forty-four Views Illustrative of the Scenery principally in the Upper Provinces of India. Reduced from Original and Interesting Drawings taken on the spot by C.G. Nicholls 1818 London. This was offered at Christie's, 17 June 1998, lots 52-76 (the drawing of the Benares bridge was lot 55).

Nicholls arrived in Calcutta, probably as a mariner, in 1792 or 1796. In 1799 he became a draughtsman in the Office of the Surveyor-General and in 1802 was surveying in Orissa. In 1815 he was granted a pension because of bad eye-sight and left India. He could not have seen all the places depicted in his album and many of them, as in the present lot, are clearly based on other artists' work.