Page 258 - Eye of the beholder

By now, I had a sizeable collection of books, monographs and catalogs of works by the Daniells. I also owned quite a few interesting aquatints published by them. Was it time now for me to move to the next level, and own an original work by the Daniells, I asked myself? For me at that time, the very aspiration to own an original work still seemed to verge on the border of temerity. The paintings were expensive, and rarely came to the market. The only times I had seen them so far were in museums – The National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi, and the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta. But the idea of owning an original Daniell was powerful enough for me to start getting consumed by it. Though the possibility of owning a painting seemed too remote to be realistic, I started keeping a watch on the secondary market throughout the world just in case a work popped up somewhere. Luck favored the prepared mind the second time around when, after about 6 months of patient watching, this monochrome painting by the Daniells came up for auction at a small provincial auction house in England.
The Daniells arrived in India by the way of China and reached Calcutta in 1786. The approach to Calcutta was the last leg of the journey from England, after a period of stay in China. The final leg of the journey to Calcutta was by boat across the Bay of Bengal and up the Hoogly river near the Sunderban delta. The Daniells were evidently fascinated by the tropical vegetation of the region, as scenes from these regions feature prominently in their book ‘A picturesque journey to India’ (Figure 1).
Their epic journey through India started a full two years after landing in Calcutta. These two years were spent in building a cash reserve sufficient enough to fund their planned journey. During this time, their main project was the publication of a set of twelve aquatints of Calcutta. The project was beset with problems, not the least of which was the fact that the Daniells themselves were inexperienced in the rather new and difficult technique of aquatinting. To ameliorate this, they had to train and recruit local craftsmen, which added to the difficulty. The project progressed slowly, and the Daniells also took on minor commissions for cleaning and restoring pictures during time.
The journey that the Daniells undertook throughout India actually occurred in mainly two different episodes (Figure 2). The first part of the journey was, broadly speaking, a journey through northern India including the Himalayas all the way up to Garhwal, undertaken between September 1788 and November 1791. It is the second part of their trip that is of more cerebral relevance to this story. After recuperating in Calcutta for a few months after the end of the first part of their journey , the Daniells were poised to undertake another journey to the south of the country. During the internecine period of the two journeys which they were spending in Calcutta, they exhibited and sold about 150 paintings and drawings of their trip of the north.
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