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Lot Essay
The subject (the ruins of the Buddhist Abhayagiri Dagoba in Anuradhapura in northern Sri Lanka) is taken from Nicholl's five-week tour of Ceylon with his patron and friend, Sir James Emerson Tennent, in the summer of 1848. Nicholl surveyed the archaeological sites of Gadaladeniya, Kandy, Dambulla, Sigiriya, Polonnaruwa and Anuradhapura on the tour, documenting all of the sites with detailed drawings, and returned exhausted to Colombo:
'I hired a palanquin carriage to convey me to my house, on the Colpetty road, five miles where I arrived nearly barefooted; my shoes having been worn out, and my clothes hanging in shreds, completely exhausted from excessive fatigue and exposure to the sun’s heat and malaria of the swampy forests with my sketches strapped over my shoulder which I carried them night and day after leaving Anuradhpoora. In the course of the morning I received a note from Dr. Williams, inviting me to dine with Sir Tennent and others of the party, and officers of the Royal Artillery, all of who were glad of my return. I retired early sick and travel worn and the following morning found me dangerously ill of jungle fever. Thus terminated my sketching tour through the forest of Ceylon, the most interesting I ever had in my life and although attended with both danger and fatigue, yet the enjoyment which I derived from it far more than compensated for the hardship of the journey, and will for ever considered by me, the most delightful of all my sketching excursions, either at home or distant lands.' (A. Nicholl, 'A Sketching tour of Five Weeks in the Forests of Ceylon, its ruined temples, colossal statues, tanks dagobahs', Dublin University Magazine, 1852).
'I hired a palanquin carriage to convey me to my house, on the Colpetty road, five miles where I arrived nearly barefooted; my shoes having been worn out, and my clothes hanging in shreds, completely exhausted from excessive fatigue and exposure to the sun’s heat and malaria of the swampy forests with my sketches strapped over my shoulder which I carried them night and day after leaving Anuradhpoora. In the course of the morning I received a note from Dr. Williams, inviting me to dine with Sir Tennent and others of the party, and officers of the Royal Artillery, all of who were glad of my return. I retired early sick and travel worn and the following morning found me dangerously ill of jungle fever. Thus terminated my sketching tour through the forest of Ceylon, the most interesting I ever had in my life and although attended with both danger and fatigue, yet the enjoyment which I derived from it far more than compensated for the hardship of the journey, and will for ever considered by me, the most delightful of all my sketching excursions, either at home or distant lands.' (A. Nicholl, 'A Sketching tour of Five Weeks in the Forests of Ceylon, its ruined temples, colossal statues, tanks dagobahs', Dublin University Magazine, 1852).