NORTH INDIA, SECOND HALF 19TH CENTURY

The growing number of European visitors travelling to India provided an opportunity for local artists to sell them mementoes with which to remember what they saw in India. Though travellers in the early 18th century were primarily fascinated by the natural history, by the mid 19th century interests had shifted, and travellers were overwhelmingly interested in India's historic architecture, and the customs of the people they encountered there. The buildings depicted in this album include the mausolea of Safdar Jung, Humayun, and Itmad al-Dawla, as well as the forts in Agra and Delhi. The compiler of the album seems to have been particularly taken with the Taj Mahal, since there are many paintings not only of the building itself but also of the pietra dura cenotaphs of Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal. About halfway through the subject shifts to the Trades of India, including depictions of religious rituals as well as street performers. Finally, the album ends with an unusual series of images which appear to depict scenes from a storybook, including knights, princesses, and three depictions of figures on sleds in the snow. Stylistically, these paintings also look to have been executed in India. The selection and arrangement of paintings, which seem to come from different series and to have been painted by different artists, suggests that they were haphazardly collected by a traveller, reflecting their own memories of travel to India.

An album of architectural watercolours in the Victoria and Albert Museum, which has many of the same compositions as paintings in our album, is recorded as having been compiled around the year 1836 (see for example acc.no.IM.46-1923). Though there are few notes in our album, in one of them the writer mentions that Humayun's tomb was the place where 'Bahadur Shah, the last of the Mogul dynasty and his sons were captured by Hodson'. The album is likely to have been assembled after that event took place in 1857. The binding of the album supports this dating, and similar bindings can be found on printed books produced in the mid 19th century.