Viceregal Party Shimla (verso)
1887
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
About the artist
Artist
Raja Deen Dayal
Raja Lala Deen Dayal, famously known as Raja Deen Dayal) was an Indian photographer.
See the richer artist page1887
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Viceregal Party Shimla (verso) is a 1887 by Raja Deen Dayal, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a group of British officials and Indian nobles in fancy clothes, standing on a hillside in Shimla. This photo was taken by an Indian photographer for a British client. It shows both sides of colonial life—rulers and local elites together, but not as equals. The album was meant as a souvenir, like a vacation photo today. To see more of this kind of scene, look up India.
These photographs are part of an album, now disassembled, of around 105 photographs taken in India between 1885 and summer 1887 that provide glimpses into the lives of the British colonial elite and royal and upper-class Indians. The museum holds another group of 37 pictures from this album (2016.266), which was probably commissioned by a British civil servant visiting or working in India around 1888 as a personal souvenir of his experiences there.
Raja Deen Dayal is regarded now, and was considered during his lifetime, to be India’s most important 19th-century photographer.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Raja Lala Deen Dayal, famously known as Raja Deen Dayal) was an Indian photographer.
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