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| Fort William, 1600’s Calcutta Fort William, 1600’s Calcutta Surat was the Mughal Empire’s most important centre for overseas trade, particularly for textiles. It was the first major Asian port city within reach of the ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope. And it was here that the Company’s traders first settled after Sir Thomas Roe’s successful diplomatic mission. |
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Fort William, 1600’s Calcutta
Grain bazaar on the Chipore Road, 1840’s Calcutta
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| Grain bazaar on the Chipore Road, 1840’s Calcutta Grain bazaar on the Chipore Road, 1840’s Calcutta A German-born Calcutta lithographer who took up photography in the late 1840s, Fiebig's views of Calcutta are the earliest extensive photographic documentation of the capital of British India. Produced from paper negatives, his prints were offered for sale in either monochrome or (as here) hand-coloured form. |
Eden Gardens, 1860’s Calcutta
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| Eden Gardens, 1860’s Calcutta Eden Gardens, 1860’s Calcutta Photograph of Eden Garden from 'Views of Calcutta and Barrackpore' taken by Samuel Bourne in the 1860s. View looking across the bridge and lake towards the Burmese pagoda within the Eden Gardens, Calcutta. Emily and Fanny Eden, after whom these gardens were named, were the sisters of the Governor-General Lord Auckland (1836-1842). Emily and Fanny accompanied their brother on a tour 'upcountry', during which Emily made many sketches and watercolours, which were later reproduced, in 1844, as a set of lithographs entitled 'Princes and People of India'. |
Village near Calcutta (Garden Reach), 1840’s Calcutta
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| Village near Calcutta (Garden Reach), 1840’s Calcutta Village near Calcutta (Garden Reach), 1840’s Calcutta Little is known of Fiebig’s career beyond his work as a topographical artist and lithographer in Calcutta in the 1840s. In the late 1840s he took up photography and this early hand-coloured print is one of over 500 views of India and Ceylon taken by him in the early years of the following decade. Among this work, some 250 of the photographs relate to Calcutta and form the earliest extensive photographic documentation of the city, made at a time when photography was just starting to supplant the engraving and the lithograph as the dominant medium of visual record. |
Ruins of the Tomb of Ghias-ud-din Azam Shah, 1872’s Sonargaon
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| Ruins of the Tomb of Ghias-ud-din Azam Shah, 1872’s Sonargaon Ruins of the Tomb of Ghias-ud-din Azam Shah, 1872’s Sonargaon Photograph of ruins from the Tomb of Ghiyas-ud-din Azam Shah, Sonargaon, near Dhaka in Bangladesh, from the Archaeological Survey of India Collections, taken by W. Brennand in 1872. The province of Dhaka was brought under Islamic rule in the 13th century, first by the Delhi Sultanate then by the independent sultans of Bengal, after which it was taken by the Mughals in 1608. Sonargaon was the capital of sultans of Bengal from the 13th century until 1608 when Islam Khan, the Mughal Governor, transferred the capital of the whole province to the nearby city of Dhaka, now the capital of Bangladesh. Ghiyas-ud-din Azam Shah ruled Bengal from 1368 to 1373. His mausoleum at Sonargaon was carved from a single black of hard black basalt and surrounded by a pillared enclosure. The tomb is described in J. Wise, Notes on Sunargaon, Eastern Bengal (Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. XLIII, part I, Calcutta, 1874), pl.VIII: 'This tomb has fallen to pieces. The iron clamps that bound the slabs together have rusted, and the roots of trees have undermined the massive stones. This mausoleum formerly consisted of a ponderous stone which occupied the centre, surrounded by pillars about five feet in height. The stones are all beautifully carved, and the corners of the slabs and the arabesque tracery are as perfect as the day they left the workman's hands. The stones are formed of hard, almost black, basalt...This tomb might be easily repaired, and the cost of doing so would be inconsiderable. There is no old building in Eastern Bengal which gives a better idea of Muhammadan taste than this ruined sepulchre; and there is none, when properly repaired, which would so long defy the ravages of time...' |
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