Add Or 1243-1283

Add.Or.1243-1283

42 drawings bound into an album (36 folios); 38 are portraits either of members of Skinner’s Horse, or of neighbours and employees of Colonel James Skinner (1778-1841), 2 are mythological subjects and 2 animal studies.

By artists of Delhi or the neighbourhood, probably including Ghulam ‘Ali Khan, c.1815-27.

Most folios inscribed with name of subject in English and sometimes in Persian characters. Index and note on ownership.

Water-colour; size of album 17 by 12 ins.

Purchased 1 February 1960.

Note: This album belonged to Colonel James Skinner (1778-1841) and was purchased by the Library via Sotheby’s from a descendant, Miss Evangeline Ingram. A note in the album reads: ‘Album of Indian drawings. Formerly the property of Colonel James Skinner, C.B., of Skinner’s Horse, Indian Army. This album descended to the present owner, Miss Evangeline Ingram, through her mother, Mrs Victoria Ingram (née Skinner) who was the only child of Colonel Skinner’s eldest son, James Skinner, who was killed by the rebels in Delhi in the Mutiny’.

Although this note was communicated by Miss Ingram, herself a descendant of Colonel Skinner, it contains many errors. James Skinner (junior) was Colonel James Skinner’s second son and died of dysentery in 1861. Victoria Skinner was the grand-daughter of Colonel James Skinner’s eldest son, Joseph (1807-55), who married a Muslim woman. Joseph’s children were George Henry Skinner, who married Helen Grant in 1855 and was killed in the Mutiny in 1857, and Amelia Sarah Skinner, who married James Richard Grindall George in 1866. George Henry’s only child, Victoria Helen Georgina Skinner (1856-1938), married a barrister, Thomas Lewis Ingram, in 1872 and they had twelve children. Victoria was the founder of the ‘model village’ of Gurgaon in the Punjab with which F.L. Brayne (‘Up-lift Brayne’) was associated.

Many of the drawings in the present album are almost certainly by Ghulam ‘Ali Khan of Delhi who painted three pictures - ‘The Durbar’, ‘The Farm’ and ‘Returning from the Review’ on Skinner’s estate at Hansi, 113 miles from Delhi. These pictures are in the National Army Museum at Chelsea and are signed and dated 1827 and 1828. In style they are similar to many drawings in the present album and it seems probable therefore that in addition to practising in Delhi, Ghulam ‘Ali Khan was from time to time employed by Colonel Skinner.

Add.Or.1260-1262 were probably painted in 1815 during an expedition in the Punjab Hills. In that year a small detachment from the army of Major-General Martindale, with the political agent, William Fraser, was despatched into the hills to help settle areas that had been affected by the Gurkha invasions. The detachment consisted of a motley collection of irregular troops, Mewatis, Gujars, Sikhs, Pathans as well as Gurkhas who had deserted or capitulated. The hard core of the force were thirty members of Skinner’s Horse led by Colonel Skinner himself. It is likely that the paintings showing a group of Mewatis, Jats and Gurkhas, some of them in uniform, were made at this time, a fact which again suggests that Skinner retained an artist. For a description of this force of irregulars, see J.B. Fraser, ‘Journal of a tour through part of the Himala mountains, and to the sources of the river Jumma and Ganges’ (London, 1820), 99-102. James Baillie Fraser, brother of the political agent, also accompanied the expedition. He was later to write a life of Skinner. [See also Toby Falk and M. Archer, ‘India Revealed: The Art and Adventures of James and William Fraser 1801-31’, London 1981, which discusses the Skinner Album in the light of the Fraser Albums.]

Although the drawings show western influence in their naturalism and use of shading, they also preserve the clear-cut precision of Mughal painting at Delhi. For portraits of Skinner by Indian artists, see British Library Add. Ms. 27254, ‘Tadhkirat al-umara,’ f.4 (reproduced J.P. Losty, ‘Indian Book Painting’, London, 1986, no.60), and a portrait in the Red Fort Museum, Delhi.