16
From the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum
Indian village dwellings is a 16 by George Chinnery, a Romanticism work, held at Victoria and Albert Museum.
This drawing shows Bengal village huts made of bamboo lattices. The roofs sag and the walls lean. A scrawny chicken pecks at the dirt outside. Chinnery sketched this in 1802, when British rule was reshaping India. The huts look worn down, but the chicken keeps life going. It’s not fancy art—just a hard look at daily struggle. It feels like a snapshot from a time before cameras. See it in person at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The drawing depicts dilapidated village dwellings in Bengal, constructed from bamboo lattices covered with thatch, with a chicken standing on uneven ground outside. Part of an album containing 175 sketches made in China and India, it was bequeathed in 1928 by James Orange as part of a collection of 93 drawings by George Chinnery. Chinnery, born in London in 1774, worked as a portraitist before relocating to India in 1802, later settling in Calcutta where he became a prominent artist. He spent his later years in Macau, where he died in 1852.
Read the full account in the museum source.
George Chinnery (Chinese: 錢納利; 5 January 1774 – 30 May 1852) was an English painter who spent most of his life in Asia, especially India and southern China.
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