WILLIAM HODGES, R.A. (LONDON 1744-1797 BRIXHAM)

Painted by William Hodges in early 1782, this unlined canvas shows a Paharia village, situated beneath the Rajmahal hills outside Bhagalpur, Bihar, in Eastern India. Along with the preceding two lots, the picture belongs to the series of grand-scale canvases Hodges painted for Augustus Cleveland, the Magistrate and Collector for Bhagalpur, with whom the artist stayed for several months at the start of 1782.

A watercolour related to this composition is preserved in the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven (fig. 1). While the arrangement of the huts is unchanged, there are numerous differences in the disposition of the figures, notably the inclusion of a Paharia archer, shown in the foreground of the present canvas holding his bamboo bow and arrow. The freshness of handling, a characteristic of the two preceding lots, is particularly evident in details such as the wet-in-wet treatment of the distant trees and the richly impastoed roof of the open-sided hut.

For notes on Augustus Cleveland and the Paharias, see the previous two lots.