Painting history: The legacy of Robert Home

Among Home’s lusher oils documenting the Third Mysore War are the famous ‘The Death of Colonel Moorhouse at the Storming of the Pettah Gate,’ and ‘Lord Cornwallis Receiving Tippoo Sahib’s Sons’

It’s December, and Bengaluru is buzzing with cultural events. One of the quieter ones, ‘From Bangalore, with Love,’ is an exhibition at the NGMA of photographic postcards depicting Bangalore-Bengaluru scenes between 1890 and 1910. Winging their way to England, postcards like these served equally to ignite imaginations and allay concerns about the faraway places the British were serving at.

Bangalore fell to Cornwallis in March 1791, soon after Home had joined the party, giving him ample opportunity to make extensive sketches of Tipu’s Palace, the Bangalore Fort (from inside and out) (Bettmann Archive)

The first publicly available photographic process, daguerreotype, was invented by the 19th century French scientist, painter and photographer, Louis Daguerre, in 1839. British India was the first country outside Europe to have professional photographic studios, with the first known photograph, of Calcutta’s Sans Souci theatre, dating as far back as 1840! Decades before photos of India began making the rounds, however, the British public’s consuming curiosity about this faraway, exotic land was fed by the work of British ‘Orientalist’ artists, who travelled through the country, producing images of landscapes, buildings, and people.

Of all Orientalist art from India, the largest and most impressive collection was a series of 144 aquatints called ‘Oriental Scenery,’ executed by an uncle-nephew duo who spent seven years in India. Circa 1784, failed landscape painter Thomas Daniell looked east to the storied wealth and opportunities of India, and obtained permission from the East India Company to work as an engraver in Calcutta. Bringing as his assistant his young nephew, William Daniell, only 16 at the time, he worked with local printmakers to produce twelve plates of ‘city views by end-1788. The prints, coloured by hand, sold well among Europeans in the city, funding the Daniells’ next expedition – Delhi via the Gangetic plains and up the Garhwal hills, before looping back to Calcutta via Lucknow.

When they returned to Calcutta at the end of 1791, their sketchbooks full, the Third Anglo-Mysore War was well underway between Tipu Sultan and Lord Cornwallis. Sensing another opportunity, the Daniells travelled speedily south to Madras, from where they set out to sketch and paint the hill forts that had been scenes of battle (correctly guessing that they would work as perfect souvenirs for British officers), apart from the magnificent temples of Madurai, Mamallapuram and Rameshwaram. In November 1792, they met another artist like themselves, an oil portrait painter from Hull called Robert Home, who had been following Cornwallis’ army since February 1791.

The Daniells never visited Bangalore; by the time they came south, the city had already been taken. They went on to Bombay instead, and made several paintings of the temples of Ellora, before returning to England in 1793. the other artist, Home, who left us a valuable pictorial record of our city.

Bangalore fell to Cornwallis in March 1791, soon after Home had joined the party, giving him ample opportunity to make extensive sketches of Tipu’s Palace, the Bangalore Fort (from inside and out), the ‘Cypress Garden’ (Lalbagh), the forts of Ootradroog (Hutridurga) and Oliahdroog (Huliyurdurga), many ‘distant views’ of Savendroog (Savandurga), including a view from Maugree (Magadi), and several views of Seringapatam (Srirangapatna), which doubtless helped the EIC army plan their attack. Among Home’s lusher oils documenting the Third Mysore War are the famous ‘The Death of Colonel Moorhouse at the Storming of the Pettah Gate,’ and ‘Lord Cornwallis Receiving Tippoo Sahib’s Sons’ (in Februrary 1792, having lost the war, Tipu was forced to surrender two of his sons as hostages until the terms of the Treaty were met). On the left side of this second painting, Home inserted himself, dressed in a green jacket and holding an artist’s portfolio under his arm.

In 1794, Home’s ‘Select Views in Mysore, the Country of Tippoo Sultan,’ was published to much excitement in London and Madras.

(Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bengaluru)