Add Or 1791-1810

Add.Or.1791-1810

20 drawings, originally bound into an album, depicting Muslim monuments at Delhi, Agra and Fatehpur Sikri, c.1820-22.

Add.Or.1791-1808 by Latif, an Agra artist; 1809-1810 by a different Delhi or Agra artist.

Inscribed with titles in English and Urdu; 1791-1807 inscribed: ‘‘Amal i Latif’ (The work of Latif). All inscribed ‘Presented by John Bax Esq. 9th Sep 1824.’

Water-colour; size of original volume 25 by 31 ins; size of drawings 21 by 28 ins.

Presented by John Bax, 9 September 1824.

Note: John Bax (1793-1863) was in the Bombay Civil Service from 1812 onwards. 1812 assistant to Accountant General; 1813 Secretary of Military Board; 1815 Acting Register to Sadar Adalat and Superior Tribunal. From 1822 to 1826 he was ‘out of employ’, returning to Bombay as Deputy Collector and Magistrate, Khandesh, 1826. It seems most probable that Bax visited Delhi and Agra some time in 1821 or 1822 and then took his drawings back to England and presented them to the East India Company. Latif appears to have been one of the best known Agra artists as well as an architect. Fanny Parks bought drawings from him in 1835, and used two of them for plates 24 and 26 in the first volume of her book, ‘Wanderings of a pilgrim in search of the picturesque’ (London, 1850): ‘The outline of the Taj, that I have annexed, was executed by Luteef, a native artist at Agra. It merely gives a faint idea of the style of architecture; the beauty of the tomb, the handsome buildings that appertain to it, the marble courts, the fine garden, the fountains, the beautiful trees, the river Jumna, - all are omitted, the mere elevation is represented in the sketch’ (Parks, i, 349, January 1835).

When describing the tomb of Colonel Hessing at Agra she wrote: ‘This beautiful Mausoleum is in the Catholic burial ground at Agra, and is well worth a visit. It was built by a native architect, by name Luteef, in imitation of the ancient Muhammadan tombs. The material is the red stone from Fathipoor Sicri, which is highly carved, but not inlaid. The tomb is beautiful, very beautiful, and in excellent taste. Its cost is estimated at about one lakh of rupees. Luteef’s drawings of the Taj and of all the ancient monuments around Agra are excellent; they cost from three to forty rupees each. I bought a large collection of them, as well as of marbles and other curiosities. Luteef inlays marble with precious stones, after the style of the work in the Taj. A chess-table of this sort, with a border of flowers in mosaic, costs from eight to twelve hundred rupees, £80, or £120 and is beautifully, executed’ ‘(Ibid,’ i, 418, 15 March 1835).

Latif’s drawings show the monuments in elevation against a plain background. The last two drawings in this set depict the monument in a landscape with figures and are typical of the new type of drawings which developed in Delhi under the influence of English prints and water-colours.

For a similar use of architectural drawings by Delhi and Agra artists as illustrations to a personal narrative, see W.H. Sleeman, ‘Rambles and recollections of an Indian official,’ 2 vols. (London, 1844), plates 1-30.