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A panorama of Delhi taken through almost 360° from the top of the Lahore Gate of the Red Fort, Delhi.

By the Delhi artist Mazhar ‘Ali Khan, dated 25th November 1846.

Inscribed in Persian, English and Urdu.

Water-colour and body-colour with gold; 665 by 4908 mm (530 by 4828 mm within frame) on five sheets of paper, glued together to form a scroll.

Purchased 1981.

Note: The artist is stationed by the ‘chattri’ on top of the southern bastion of the Lahore Gate, and in the first instance is looking north. The panorama proceeds from the left in a clockwise direction, and the artist adopts three more viewpoints, realigning the perspective accordingly as the panorama unfolds. The first three sheets include the palace buildings, while the fourth is focussed on the Jami‘ Masjid and the fifth on Chandni Chowk. The panorama is particularly important as an accurate record of the appearance of the city and palace some ten years before the demolitions of 1857-8.

Underneath the main frame is a narrow band with inscriptions in Persian with (mostly) transliterated Urdu versions probably by the same hand, while there are contemporary English inscriptions in pencil mostly outside the frames below. The English inscriptions are largely superfluous or wrong, and cannot have been added by Metcalfe.

J.P. Losty, Delhi 360: Mazhar Ali Khan's View from the Lahore Gate, Roli Books, 2012.